


It Could Have Been Sweet

by LadyLuckDoubt



Category: Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney
Genre: Drunken sex, Intoxication, M/M, One Night Stand, Phoenix Wright Kink Meme, Unrequited, references to past relationships, transferred affection, wedding angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2013-02-01
Packaged: 2017-11-27 20:00:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/665888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLuckDoubt/pseuds/LadyLuckDoubt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the prompt left on the Kink Meme: </p><p>Phoenix and Thalassa are getting married. Edgeworth is in love with Phoenix but never told him. Apollo is still trying to deal with actually having a mother, let alone a new stepfather, not to mention Phoenix messing him around and hiding the truth about his parents from him. At the reception they both get wasted and have upset, drunken sex.</p><p>The aftermath is extremely awkward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Could Have Been Sweet

**Author's Note:**

> What do I say? This prompt had me hanging for awhile (even though I was the anon behind the other Edgeworth/Apollo piece someone linked to in the comments!) because I love the idea of a more than slightly emotional and dysfunctional Edgeworth and Apollo hooking up and both having their own unresolved issues with Phoenix. 
> 
> Apollo and Edgeworth, in my mind, would actually be pretty good together: they're both serious, organised, deeply sarcastic types who've both been shaped during their formative years by pretty damn scary mentors whom they were quite clearly devoted to. They can both appreciate a nice three-piece suit. And it's easy to imagine them geeking out about minor details of legislation change or the godamned MASON system over a cup of tea and being most unamused when more playful cast members call them obsessed legal nerds.
> 
> But let's face it; I also really love miserable French movie setups and will probably be the first person to go, "Hey, someone might be perfect for someone else, but that don't ACTUALLY mean it's going to work." People have a really good way of fucking up things that might be good for them.
> 
> But not working doesn't mean not HAPPENING. Even if it's all a really bad idea and a really big mess.
> 
>  
> 
> Oh, and a LOT of my headcanon spilled out into this one. There are references to several other past relationships, too.

It shouldn’t have turned out this way.   
  
Of course not; in his mind, it would have been different; Wright would have never become involved with  _her_ ; things between them would have been friendly and professional, it wouldn’t have developed into something more. It was, he’d thought bitterly at first, the kind of ridiculous, unprofessional romance which Wright should have stayed away from; it wasn’t befitting him; it was crude and childish and desperate, and in those early days when he’d heard the words  _Lamiroir_ and  _international pop star_ , he’d snorted and comforted himself with the fact that he wasn’t losing himself in a silly celebrity relationship which would be sealed for five minutes with a gaudy wedding and a fairytale ending (only to be shattered months later and fraught with scandal and lawsuits and plenty of other perfectly undignified things as these affairs so often were).  
  
The frustrating thing about the ending was that it was—childish and desperate as he knew he was being— _his_.  
  
It wasn’t some random woman’s: Lamiroir could have had her choice of celebrity singers—hell, if she wanted a  _lawyer_  she could have partnered up with that showpony Gavin—just... not Wright. For years, Miles had told himself that waiting patiently, not pushing anything—not allowing his selfish desires to be pushed onto Wright—was what was best—that when things settled down and his name was cleared, then he could make his move.   
  
Instead, when he returned, months after everything had come to closure and Kristoph Gavin was safely behind bars and awaiting the fatal injection, he had front-row seats to watch the next chapter in his old friend --and long-time obsession--’s life: the wedding plan.  
  
  
And here was where it ended: he knew there would be no epilogue and no bitter shit-flinging match in court; Thalassa and Phoenix were  _in love_ ; they’d had plenty of time to fall for one another, to adjust to one another, to see what was behind the front and the fantasy. They were friends and companions and lovers, and rather than being a hilariously gaudy affair, the wedding had been small and tasteful. Miles could find nothing to fault, as much as he’d wanted to. And perhaps that made everything all the more frustrating.

 

  
  
And now he was here—the godamned reception—sitting on the edge—watching the others mingle and dance and catch up with one another—while cheesy early naughties music played overhead. He could see Gavin—and Franziska, of all people (and somehow watching  _her_ enjoy herself at this godforsaken event felt like betrayal even though he’d never felt anything even close to loyalty from her) dancing, laughing along to themselves, and he felt a sense of melancholy. He always managed to feel a bit lonelier when everyone  _else_  was happy and his own feelings couldn’t budge in that direction. Phoenix had urged him, somewhat tipsily, to stay, and while he saw no purpose in doing so, he’d remained there. This was his best friend and the man who’d been on his mind unrelentingly for the past decade: it wouldn’t hurt to see this out for a few more hours. Perhaps there would be something to be gained for staying here, maybe he could somehow make Phoenix’s night that bit more special—  
  
He was kidding himself, he realised, as a very-involved Phoenix and an equally-involved Thalassa sailed past him merrily.  
  
But—he’d been offered the position of best man. He had to stay this thing out, didn’t he? Etiquette dictated it, he supposed, and at nearly forty, he still couldn’t shake Manfred’s insistence in the back of his head about knowing the rules and following them. He was expected to be there, even though he was the only one seated.

 

 

Well, not quite. Across the hall, in the glittered half-light, sitting similarly by himself, was Wright’s stepson, looking every bit as out of place as he felt. The only difference was that the kid—and it felt wrong thinking of a man who was in his twenties as a “kid”—was clutching what looked like a thick folder, and gripped in his other hand was a pen—and on his face was an expression stuck somewhere between worry and rage. If not anything else, it was intriguing.   
  
  
Of course Miles knew who he was: Apollo Justice was the lawyer who’d been caught up in the whole mess, the bridging gap between the entire truth and random truths peppered with lies. Justice was serious and studious; he had the reputation for being a very good lawyer, enthusiastic almost to the point of amusing, and very, very stubborn. Miles frowned at the sight of him; Phoenix had briefly introduced them months ago but they’d had little to do with one another beyond that: he was in a higher league, Justice was still small potatoes. And his strange sense of loyalty or fanboyism or whatever it was meant that he tended to avoid conferring with lawyers he regarded as the competition. It was something Klavier Gavin would chuckle about in the workplace, and it was a topic which usually darkened Miles’ mood severely. It was an embarrassing reminder of what he’d been like years ago when he saw “the other side” as the enemy; and any reference, even the smallest, to Phoenix Wright’s wonderful new life was nails on a chalkboard to him.   
  
But the fact that he, too, was sitting alone was intriguing: surely he should be pleased about his change in circumstances, having a legend, an idol,  _a man of Wright’s standing_ —as opposed to a manipulative, perverse sociopath—for a mentor and a stand-in father... right?

  
  
If he was pleased about the celebrations, Apollo Justice gave no indication, and following his gaze with his own, Miles watched as the younger man’s attention seemed to shift uncomfortably around the room, settling on nothing or no one in particular, before his eyes moved back to the page he was writing on. He could empathise—the only thing stopping him from accidentally revealing his own awkwardness was the fact that the red wine he’d been sipping throughout the evening had dulled his own body language, relaxing him, making him lazy and inwardly melancholic. He didn’t feel jumpy and bothered-- not did he have the distraction of a journal-- like Apollo had, and he felt a small pang of sympathy for the kid whose discomfort was as obvious as neon lighting.   
  


  
The wine continued being offered—the catering staff were apparently old friends of Wright’s from his days working at the Borscht Bar, and because their star attraction was getting married to a  _celebrity_ , they’d spared no expense with the beverages. And it was  _good_ , Miles could appreciate, it was the type of red he’d have bought for his own cellar—if he’d had one, if he’d had a  _house_ , if he’d needed that much  _space_ which would only have been the case if he had someone to share the space  _with_ and—  
  
  
The music changed, and some of the dancers shifted back to their tables. The more Miles thought about it, the more miserable he was growing, and he knew it was best to avoid other people when in this mindframe. Putting his glass down gently, he scanned the room for an exit, something to do to avoid the rush, and where he could have some time out to think of an excuse to desperately need to be somewhere that wasn't here.

 

   
  
He was the best man, though, and in his limited knowledge of wedding etiquette, the best man didn’t just  _leave_. Perhaps the best man got the bride so drunk that she wouldn’t be able to offer any first-night lovemaking, which was where  _he_  could step in and—  
  
It was stressed, nasty thinking, even though his body said otherwise, plied calm and composed thanks to the wine. He needed escape. To his right was the dance floor area, a DJ booth and people ambling about—to the left was—the foyer, where the smokers headed, and—  
  
The  _facilities_.

It was an idea, he supposed, and drifting through the crowd he wondered how long was an acceptable period of time to remain locked in a toilet, thinking, still  _at_ the reception but not actually  _around_ other people, before other guests would start getting irritated. Maybe there was an essence of locking himself into a corner, literally—but right now his brilliant legal mind couldn’t work out anything better to do. It was better than remaining at the table and waiting for someone to notice him, and interact with him out of pity. It was better sitting in a public toilet cubicle than tipsily meandering through conversation which he didn’t want to be having because more than anything he wanted to be left alone or with Phoenix, who was now completely off-limits in reality but who couldn't just fade out so easily in fantasy.  
  
  
He walked past Apollo Justice’s table without really noticing, his concentration focused on maintaining his composure and little else. No one  _had_  to know that he was somewhat intoxicated; perhaps it was years of repression and denial and maintaining a functioning façade, courtesy of his years with Manfred, but Miles knew that when he focused, he could appear  _perfectly_ functional.   
  
Of course, it was difficult in the muted light, especially when someone had the idiocy to leave their handbag on the floor next to a chair and—staggering slightly, he kept his gaze focused on the goal, but the falter had alerted the younger man at the table.  
  
  
  
“Mister Edgeworth?”  
  
Inwardly, Miles groaned: this was the sort of thing that he was trying to avoid. Besides, Apollo was probably at least third on the List of People Whom He Least Wanted to Talk to—the first being Wright himself, followed by an _obviously_ drunken Larry who was dancing in the sort of manner that Miles could only describe as “fitful.”  
  
“Hello—er—Justice.” A small hiccup escaped him and he hoped that in the darkness Apollo didn’t notice his face flush with humiliation—but when the younger man greeted him, his voice sounding somewhat  _slurred_ , Miles softened. Slightly.   
  
“Why don’t you join me?”  
  
Was it an invitation in all seriousness, or was Justice being... well Wright  _had_ said that he could be remarkably sarcastic and snippy, especially when he was under pressure over matters he considered trivial. Wright had mentioned it in the time in a teasing fashion, suggesting that it was a quality that he shared with Miles—the memory causing Miles to bristle uncomfortably. Glancing at Apollo-- as he placed his hand protectively over the folder—no, Miles noticed, it wasn’t a folder but a large leather-bound  _book_ of some description—that journal Wright had mentioned him writing in?—he remained standing there, unsure.  
  
“Have a  _seat_ ,” Justice insisted, kicking out the chair next to him. The anger in his movement, while hidden from his voice, was all too clear. “Sit down and enjoy the show.”  
  
“I was actually thinking of getting some fresh air,” Miles lied.  
  
Apollo studied him carefully. “No you weren’t.”

How he knew that remained a mystery to the older man—was this just lucky guesswork, or was there a method to his knowledge? Either way, Miles couldn’t be bothered arguing.   
  
“I was planning on using the  _facilities_ ,” he offered more delicately, glancing away from Apollo’s intense gaze. Why the hell did the kid  _stare_ like that? It was downright  _creepy_. He didn’t want to sit next to him, much less engage with him in awkward conversation.  
  
“No you weren’t,” Apollo said defiantly.   
  
Miles stepped back. Who the hell was this guy anyway, interrogating a virtual stranger's need to use the bathroom?  
  
“You were doing what I was thinking of doing two songs ago.”

Raising an eyebrow, Miles didn’t say anything, but snappy and seemingly a lot more outspoken than Miles has remembered the young lawyer, Apollo replied—“I was trying to work out how to slip out unnoticed, too.”  
  
Maybe that caused Miles to soften.   
  
Something about the younger man’s brash admission and the bitterness in his voice made him feel empathetic to his plight. Of course his own issues differed from Justice’s—and there was no way he intended on saying anything about _them_ , but he was aware of that idea about misery loving company. Watching everyone else be so joyous and  _involved_ with one another made Miles feel dismal and quite lonely in a manner he wasn’t particularly used to.

“You—  _were_?”  
  
Apollo's small, dainty hand clasped at the cover of the leatherbound book on the table in front of him, dragging it towards his body protectively, like he was scared that Miles was going to pick it up and start leafing through it. While Miles tried not to look too interested, he spied the word  _Journal_  on the front cover and, suspicions confirmed, found himself intrigued.   
  
“Yes,” Apollo insisted. “But when it’s your mother and new  _stepfather’s_  wedding, and you were  _supposed_  to be the best man, you can’t really walk out early, can you?”  
  
 _Supposed to be the best man?_  That was another stab in the heart—Miles had assumed that Phoenix had specifically chosen _him_ for the role, and had kept him in mind for so long that it seemed natural—only typical of Wright’s disorganisation, he had just assumed and not mentioned it to Miles until the last minute.  _Not_ that it was a hand-me-down job from someone who didn’t particularly want it. Avoiding Justice’s eyes, he looked out onto the dancefloor, where an apparently still-happy Franziska was now dancing merrily with Larry, their movements thoroughly over the top and innocent but for the alcohol inspiring them. Would Larry have been next in line? Did Larry get offered, only to turn down the role, leaving it to fall down to him? He hated to admit it, but the idea  _stung_.  
  
  
“I doubt it’s a choice the  _actual_  best man can opt for, either.”  
  
Apollo smiled slightly but looked away. “I can’t believe I nearly got roped into it,” he muttered. “I told them I was going to be  _enjoying_  myself. I even said to Mr. Wright that you don’t have your  _stepson_  playing best man. That roles is  _meant_  for someone like—well—  _you_.”  
  
“Oh  _please_.” His dismissal of the comment wasn’t really modesty. “I spent all the time Wright and Thalassa were getting to know one another abroad. By the time I’d returned, Wright and I had grown apart. He probably has a better relationship with the man at the street corner noodle cart than he did with me.”  
  
“He always spoke highly of you,” Apollo said with a shrug. “Anyone would have thought he was planning on marrying  _you_  once upon a time.”   
  
That was the comment which caused him to freeze, and Apollo watched him carefully, his eyes widening slightly. Miles frowned. If  _that_  hadn’t given him away entirely, he didn’t know what would. And Justice was bright enough to figure it out—and quick enough when it came to reading body language, it seemed—to know what was going on.  
  
“If he was that way inclined,” Miles offered dismissively. “Which of course he isn’t.”  
  
Justice blinked, his eyes not quite meeting Miles’ own. In the background, the music changed to something a bit louder, and when Miles recognised it as one of those irritating Top Ten hits from the Gavinners—the damn thing seemed to follow him around like a leitmotif during his European tour of duty—he found it hard to hide a smile when Justice stood up.  
  
“That’s it,” the younger man snapped. “They said they weren’t going to play this garbage.” The revealing element of alcohol had crept into his voice, and Miles eyed the half-empty bottle of red on the empty table. It didn’t appear that Justice had seated himself amongst other guests, so logic dictated that the young man had consumed the wine by himself. At least the kid had good taste.  
  
“It’s probably Mr. Wright’s idea of a  _joke_ ,” Justice sneered.   
  
Hiding a chuckle behind one hand and steadying himself against the back of a chair with the other, Miles couldn’t help but give away his amusement. It  _was_  the sort of thing Wright would do, whether or not he’d realised it. But what was Apollo Justice’s problem with the Gavinners anyway? He hardly looked like a fan of more refined musical tastes—

“Don’t laugh,” Justice snapped—“Klavier Gavin might be a nice guy but he’s  _irritating._  And when I mentioned  _that_  in front of  _my mother_  and Mr. Wright, he started making jokes about the guy flirting with me.”  
  
Miles sniffed—it was typical of Klavier Gavin, from what he knew of the man.  _And_  it was typical of Wright. But he felt sorry for Justice now; Wright could be perfectly oblivious to other people’s emotional needs, and the fact that he’d so selfishly ignored Justice’s made him warm even more to the younger man.  
  
“I can only imagine how  _un_ funny that would be.”  
  
“You don’t know half of it.” Justice looked towards the speakers and the DJ booth, and then towards the exit. His left hand was still clutching the journal, and the right reached out to grab the bottle of red wine on the table by the neck. He smiled devilishly. “I remember Mr. Wright saying you were a wine drinker,” he said. 

 _What else has Mr. Wright said about me?_  
  
The question hung in the back of Miles’ brain, unanswered, though, as Apollo got up from his seat and stepped out. “Let’s get out of here,” he offered.   
  
Looking around at the rest of the guests—people whom he’d been avoiding, people he did not know—and people who seemed to annoy Justice even more than they annoyed him right now—compared to another misfit who seemed like decent company for the time being—it was hardly a difficult decision. He straightened his cravat with one hand and gently took the bottle of wine from Justice’s hand with the other. “Let’s,” he said, smiling slightly. This had to be better than the alternative.

 

.:.

 

 

Outside, the garden was all but deserted. Somewhere in the distance, by the front gates, taxis and limousines arrived and departed, moving guests from the function back to hotel rooms—but from where Miles and Apollo were standing, they remained blissfully unaware of the world around them for the moment, and the world was equally unaware of them. In the distance, cicadas whined their mechanical summer song, and fireflies danced amongst the hedges which obscured them from passerby.   
  
“At least this fucking wedding will be over after tonight and everything can go back to normal,” Justice muttered angrily.   
  
Miles nodded. “I can only imagine what it must have been like for you.” Despite his own melancholy, he couldn’t help but feel sorry for the younger man—Justice always seemed so organised and sensible, and Phoenix Wright had never been either of those things. And age only seemed to make him even worse.   
  
“You never had the pleasure of living with him.”   
  
Miles laughed. He could only imagine. Of course, somewhere in the back of his mind, in the depths of his fantasies, he  _had_ , and Wright was like some sort of  _feral_  who needed to be tamed into domesticity. But thinking about it now brought to the surface a bitter, almost vengeful kind of irritation that he’d suppressed for months now. Of course Wright probably had known that he’d had feelings for him. But of course he’d swallowed that the moment Thalassa and Phoenix were a couple, and it had left him unsatisfied and irritated… and, as much as he hated to admit it, jealous.   
  
The jealousy and irritation hadn’t abated at the wedding, either; rather Wright’s complete indifference to him was like another slap in the face. And worse yet—he  _knew_  he was being unfair. Still,  _life_  was unfair and for the first time—  
  
“I bet you have some stories about him,” Justice said.  
  
Just as Miles opened his mouth to—to  _what_? To protest, to agree, to start spilling stories about a humiliated, desperate Phoenix—would he actually do that, though—  _could—_  he do it—? Justice continued. “I used to look up to him, you know?”  
  
Miles didn’t say anything. There was a desperation in Apollo’s voice now, what looked like a desire for release and catharsis. Suddenly Miles was acutely aware that there was more than one Wright being talked about: the Wright of his fantasies and seven years ago lived on in his mind and dominated all else, but the Wright Justice was talking about in the here and now was someone else.  
  
“I used to think he was being elusive, that he was  _depressed_  and that was why he was so stand-offish with me…” Miles raised an eyebrow, aware that the smaller man was actually more intoxicated than he appeared. It was like something had chipped away at a perfectly balanced façade and now it could only crumble. “I didn’t mean to come back to him—“ Justice said angrily—“I didn’t want his  _help_. But I was  _pissed_ , you know--?—Mr. Wright—now my  _stepfather_ \-- pretty much ruined my life all because of some stupid revenge plan on the man who was my mentor—“  
  
Miles sighed. He almost wanted to get caught up in the angry discussion about Phoenix, but he knew that Apollo’s assertion wasn’t at all fair. And furthermore, he suspected that Wright had actually had his heart—and his brain—in the right place. And typical of Wright, he bumbled forwards, heart over head, eyes on the end goal, not really considering—through no act of malice but sheer stupid myopic vision—that there would be other people getting knocked around in his frenzy.  
  
“Your mentor, from my understanding, was a bad man. And a corrupt lawyer.” Miles stretched, his grey eyes not quite meeting Apollo’s, which caused the younger man to twitch momentarily. “I know what it’s like when our guides let us down but—"

A devilish chuckle escaped Apollo then, and suddenly, in the scattered light, his eyes grew bigger, his hair spikes seemed to lift into something more prominent, and his features became more clearly defined. It was the light, Miles reasoned, because anything else would have been ridiculous, but there  _was_  something about his manner— he was passionate and raring for a fight. There was a spark of danger in him; something demonic and possessed, and it was only intensified by his intoxication. “You have no idea,” he guffawed, grabbing the neck of the wine bottle away from Miles. “You  _really_ have no idea, do you?”  
  
Where on earth had this confidence come from? When  _Wright_  did this, it was a dare, a challenge, it was asking if he was going to enter into an arena. And they were equally matched rivals— frustrating and disorganised as Wright could be, he could still respect the man's track record. This one had  _none_  of that. In that moment, Miles’ interest in, and empathy toward Apollo seeped away: what he didn’t know about  _his_  life was more than enough. Who was this cocky little drunkard to sneer like that?  
  
Angrily, he darted out to grab the bottle back from him, but Justice swerved away, pulling the bottle towards him like it was a treasured toy.

“I  _was_  informed about your mentor’s proclivities,” he said angrily. “Which included murder and poisoning young girls.” A sharp, raised eyebrow.   
  
 _Take that!_  
  
Justice opened his mouth and scowled, clearly beaten. It was enough to make Miles want to do that  _bow_ , that snide, behold-my-triumph movement, though a part of his mind—the sensible part which clearly hadn’t been fired up well when he thought it was a good idea to drink that much, he tersely reminded himself—knew that he was still unsteady on his feet. Justice merely stared at him.  
  
“Wright was hardly a model of ethical standards,” he snapped. “You know, he lied to and screwed around probably as many people as my mentor did—“  
  
“Wright didn’t kill anyone.”  
  
“That we  _know_  about.”  
  
“He  _wouldn’t_!”   
  
Their voices had risen enough to make a couple walking past look up, worried about the argument taking place in close proximity. They stopped the argument abruptly, glaring hotly at one another.   
  
“You’re just saying that because you’re still in love with him.”   
  
How the hell had he  _known_? That was like a slap in the face, and Miles could feel his cheeks reddening, and he could only hope that Justice wasn't quite the people reader enough to realise that he'd revealed a truth. He didn't know what to say— usually he would have come into a fight prepared— and sober. Instead, he seized opportunity and reached for the items Apollo was holding. His focus on the bottle of wine— which he seemed to childishly want for himself— had made him neglectful towards the journal. And that was when Miles made his grab for it.

  
And that was when the younger man's face blanched considerably. Miles could see the way his grip seemed to loosen on the bottle neck, and his mouth opened. "Give it back," he snarled. But his voice was seasoned with California '12 red. Miles had him in check.  
  
They glared at one another, Miles fondling the journal pages with a careful index finger. "You know  _my_  secrets," he offered with a grim smirk— "What shall  _I_  find out about you?" A small hiccup escaped his throat.   
  
"Nuh-nothing."  
  
"The guilty always hide. And pretend that they're innocent. That's what criminals  _do_ , isn't it? And what is to be expected of the young greenhorn whose mentor was a murderer, a forger, and a Machiavellian  _schemer_  of the most atrocious kind?"

It was like being back in court. And he was winning; it was a delicious, embarrassingly easy fight; it was fortunate release for the uncomfortable rage he’d been stifling and hiding beneath a sober and calm façade as the best man.  
  
He wasn’t _actually going to read_ from the journal—Wright had made the odd joke about the way Justice always had his nose buried in the damn book and that it sometimes accompanied him into the bathroom—and that he’d leafed through and it was full of childish, grandiose posturing, the sort of thing even he’d avoided when he was starting out.   
  
“Give it  _back_.” For such a short person, Apollo Justice was loud and quite forceful, but that only intensified Miles’ irritation. Who the hell  _was_  he to—  
  
His hand—the one not gripping the neck of the bottle—clenched into an angry, ready fist and— wide-eyed, Miles ducked out of the way.   
  
 _Fuck him—he was going to punch me—_  
  
“Did your esteemed mentor teach you standover tactics to use on the opposition?” he asked coldly.  
  
“Mine didn’t carry around a _taser_ —“  
  
Stopping again, Miles held the journal tightly but froze. People didn’t just  _make references_ to Manfred von Karma lightly, and few knew about the taser. Wright must have been talking to him. Another thing to be irritated about.   
  
“I heard all about Manfred von Karma,” Apollo snapped, “About how you were betrayed by him— you know Wright suggested—in his infinite arrogance and naivete—that the two do us would probably get along because we were similar—“ 

He snorted scornfully.  
  
“Sometimes he does foolishly assume things about people,” Miles said, his voice cold, “At least we can agree on that—“  
  
“More like it was some other stupid scheme of his, probably to fob the two of us off onto one another so he could get in with my  _mother—_ “  
  
The word  _mother_  was another weapon, and something  _else_ people didn’t mention flippantly around him.   
  
“You don’t know what you have, do you?” Miles said quietly, a rage coursing through him. “You sound like a spoiled child who—“  
  
“Spoiled?” Justice’s voice rose again, and Miles found himself trying to imagine him in court, with the high ceilings and the acoustics and the  _projection_. God. The fact that his mentor had put up with him for—how long was it—?—  
  
“ _Spoiled_?” he asked again, fury blazing in his eyes. “I spend the first fifteen years of my life working out how to survive without knowing my parents and with dealing with the  _foster care_  system. I didn’t get taken in by a brilliant legal mind and allowed to do whatever I wanted and trained to become a prosecutorial killing machine when I was nine— and who could buy me anything I wanted—I was—“  
  
“Well you have all that  _now_ , don’t you?” Miles interrupted. “Grow up, Justice: you’ve been  _handed_  back an opportunity some would probably go to the ends of the earth for. There are people who would give up everything to have had more time with at least one parent.”  
  
Perhaps it was the way he’d quietened. Maybe it was a ploy to prise the journal from him—but Justice stopped, and his own voice softened. “If I could give that to you, I  _would_ ,” he said. There was still undeniable bitterness in his voice. “I never asked for this, I don’t want it. One minute a witness has turned into a key player in a murder trial and suddenly the entire legal system—and my  _life—_  and the one person who’s actually given a  _shit_  about me—is uprooted all because Wright has a score to settle and wants to prove that he’s  _correct_.”  
  
“If you’re referring to Shadi Smith’s murder, Wright would have likely hanged for it.” Miles squinted, looking carefully at the angry, reddened face in front of him. In some ways, he was so perfectly confident, so detached and ready to accept evidence—and in some ways, he was the childish, grandiose and overly-passionate  _child_  whom Wright had laughingly described to him. “An innocent man— _dead—_ because of _your_ mentor.”  
  
For once: silence. Justice’s eyes darted around the garden, refusing to rest on anything, and it was then when Miles noticed the way he bit down on his bottom lip, through—was it frustration?—or anger? Or was the kid merely vexed and aware that he’d been bested?It was almost endearing. In the sort of old-school Wright way, where getting him flustered and bothered was almost like flirting with him, where for a moment he had the power to do that with—

  
“All right,” Justice admitted. “It wasn’t fair. I’d have done the same thing.”  
  
Stunned into not knowing what to say—did the kid really have some humility—?—Miles just watched. He noted the way Apollo turned ever-so-slightly, not quite facing him, looking out toward the horizon where the sun had bade its farewell hours ago. “You didn’t know him, though,” he said. “He wasn’t really the monster everyone made him out to be.”  
  
Miles cleared his throat—very quietly of course, his grey eyes softening with every moment of silence. In all the years afterwards, he’d heard jokes about Manfred von Karma—Wright and their ever-socially-inept sometimes-sidekick were the worst offenders—he’d heard disbelief, he’d heard disgust and sympathy. But no one had quite expressed that sort of understanding. Maybe Wright _hadn’t_ been so stupid and naïve after all—perhaps he’d noticed an area of common ground between them—  
  
“I’ll tell you what,” he muttered. “If you’re prepared to believe that about my mentor, I’ll believe it about yours.”  
  
Justice blinked. He didn’t disagree, though he stretched out one hand. “My journal, please, Mr. Edgeworth.”   
  


 

Miles considered it, and then gave thought to the fact that Justice—unsophisticated, loud and childish as he appeared, was nonetheless shrewd. He could read people. He had been mentored by a thoroughly precise and perfectly organised monster who seemed to have a sixth sense for detecting— and working with—others’ weaknesses, and he had tricks of his own up his sleeve or channelled through that godamned bracelet on his wrist. Miles gripped the journal a bit tighter.   
  
Justice raised an eyebrow. “Gotcha,” he said quietly. “That’s all you have left to bargain with, isn’t it?”   
  
Miles didn’t have a world of experience with people like this. In the courtroom, he received at least a level of respect given his position and his accomplishments; even Wright seemed to hold him, in the early days, before they’d started calling themselves  _friends_ , in a quiet, distant awe. Justice wasn’t like that; there was no respect from him, no recognition of his achievement and status. 

Actually, the kid didn’t have much recognition of anything; he seemed to behave as though the world was his and to be stomped over however he felt like it. He wondered what his mentor had made of _that_ ; from all reports, Kristoph Gavin had been demure and calm and poised—and quite regal—the sort of type whom one would expect to see in the prosecutors’ offices, not running a small office of his own.  
  
Justice blinked. “You didn’t even flinch when I said that,” he announced. “You realised that I had you and there’s no argument to retaliate with. You can’t even run like you try to in most cases, so you just freeze up and detach from everything, don’t you?”   
  
Damn him. Just who the hell did he—?  
  
“And my new  _stepfather—_ “ the roll of his eyes clearly evident in his tone—“had so much trouble with you?” Justice chuckled to himself. Those deceptively innocent brown eyes widened slightly, and turned angry as Miles retaliated with—as Justice himself had said—the one thing he had left. He tore into the journal, ignoring the leather strap on it, opening at a random page, and stepping back. 

Behind him was a fountain—if Justice  _pushed_ , he and the journal would both become saturated.   
  
It was stupid and childish, and perfectly undignified—yes, he understood completely and could only begin to see the disapproving faces of Manfred, of the Judge, of all of his colleagues and international associates—glaring at him in disgust in the back of his head. But none of  _them_  had been talked and dragged into watching the only person whom he held a candle for marrying a  _pop star_ , being stuck on a table with people whom he did not have anything in common with and no reason to talk to, forced to drink wine to do  _something_  because escape would have been  _rude—_    
  
“Don’t,” Justice warned. But Miles was already in his element, smirking to himself as he opened the covers, flipping to somewhere in the middle.

“ _My mentor_ ,” he read,  _annunciating_  each word, adding his own particularly snide flare— “ _was telling me today that I have the makings of a great._ ”   
  
He paused, raising his eyebrows and waiting to add his own commentary. A small hiccup escaped him, only adding to the comedy, and Justice’s eyes were wide and furious.   
  
“A great  _what_?” Miles asked nastily. “By the way, Justice some of your punctuation is atrocious.”  
  
“Give it back.”  
  
 _"Sometimes I’m not sure about this. Mister Gavin is nothing like me. He has told me repeatedly that he sees a younger version of himself in me, as though I take him back to his own memories of starting his career, but I don’t really believe it, as much as I hate to dispute him. He doesn’t know me, he has no grasp of how flawed I really am—perhaps he’s not looked hard enough or is too busy to. He’s nothing _like_  me. He’s smooth and subtle and he moves as though he owns the world and entrances everyone who crosses his path.” _

Miles’ sarcasm rolled down into shock at what he was doing as he bit out the last few words, self-loathing and disgust brewing _._

 _  
“Naturally he’s had the same effect on me._”  
  
  
“Give it  _back_.”   
  
Realisation of just what he was reading occurred a nanosecond too late. Perhaps Wright had been poking around in other parts of the journal, and he’d seen grandiose writing about the kid being a champion of justice and the underdog, but the point  _he’d_  tapped into was where Justice was a naïve, insecure kid who was enamoured with his mentor. It made him feel uncomfortable; Manfred had always warned him to be careful about what he wrote down, whereas Justice never received such guidance. He wondered who else had read the journal.   
  
To Justice’s surprise, he closed it swiftly, fumbling with the strap on the front, and handed it back without another word.  
  
And to Miles’ surprise, Justice’s eyes had become evasive and nervous, though a small “Thankyou” left his mouth and he stepped back, precious journal tightly smothered in his grip.  
  
“You should really be more careful with your secrets,” Miles offered. It wasn’t an apology but a strange type of drunken attempt at consolation. He’d never been good at admitting when he’d gone too far because it was so rare for him to do so and he hadn’t had much practise.  
  
“I don’t have secrets any more,” Justice said. There was a self-deprecating laugh. “When you live in something just bigger than a  _room_  with three other people while the supposed adults are busy deciding on the perfect happy-ending love nest, you don’t  _get_  to have secrets.”  
  
It was that moment where Miles felt strangely grateful that Manfred had left him that apartment. Franziska had been left with the house—which she’d sold because while she believed the idea of ghosts haunting her for eternity was foolish—she’d preferred the idea of working internationally.   
  
“Please don’t tell me that they  _still_  haven’t found a house—and that you’re still living in that shoebox?” There was no scorn in his voice, but irritation. “I’d said to Wright before that it was even a stretch for two people, but now he’s—?”  
  
“Mr Gavin was helping me pay my rent,” Justice said quietly. “And I was getting paid for working at Gavin and Co, obviously, so you can imagine what happened when my mentor was jailed and I had nowhere to go.”  
  
“There isn’t exactly a charity which helps homeless lawyers get back on their feet, is there?”  
  
“And I wasn’t going to ask.” Justice’s voice was grim and defiant, daring Miles to make a joke. “I’ve been a vict—I mean  _client_  of the system in the past. Living with Mr. Wright was preferable. Slightly.”

Miles nodded, and decided some credit where it was due wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. He didn’t  _like_  Justice, but could accept that the kid had a cockroach knack for survival and that was, to some degree, impressive. And there’d been no suggestion of him just running off somewhere and falling to pieces when his mentor had been revealed to be a murderer who’d used him—that was, well, admirable. And more than he had managed when faced with similar circmstances.  
  
“I can imagine,” he offered. “Wright’s probably told you everything, but the six months I spent in state care before being found by Manfred were hardly amongst the shining moments of glory in my life.”   
  
“Mr. Wright did mention… stuff about you and Manfred von Karma,” Justice said. His eyes were evasive. “I—I’m sorry you kind of went through ...something similar to me.”   
  
Miles nodded, and the silence between them had changed into something different now; there was an understanding between them, a shared sort of respect. Gone were the taunts and arguments, Justice had mellowed—but so—he admitted to himself—had he.   
  
They were momentarily distracted by guests leaving—a quick glance at which guests were doing so caused Miles to recoil with horror.  
  
“What?” Justice sounded curious.   
  
“I just didn’t think I would see something like _that_ ,” Miles said—“It appears that a couple of mutual associates of ours have decided to drink and—  _well—_ “  
  
“Anyone I’d know?” His interest was amusing.   
  
“No one whom you could blackmail, if that was what you were considering—“  
  
“That’s low, coming from the guy they called the Demon Prosecutor.” Justice smiled slightly. Was this at attempt at glossing over the ugliness from just before, or were they genuinely getting along? Or had the kid been drinking so much that he no longer cared who he insulted—?—No. He’d remembered a small, insignificant detail—that stupid moniker—from years ago.   
  
Miles cleared his throat. He still wasn’t entirely comfortable with jokes about his career. “At any rate—no—I don’t think you would know either of them. And it is probably for the best—“

 

"But _I LOVE YOU_!” The voice from around the corner, behind the hedges, was loud and distinguishable enough for Justice to nod.   
  
“I know Larry,” he said, a groan in his voice. “He and Mr Wright thought it would be funny to hire a hooker to come onto me when we were out one evening a few nights after that trial. Apparently I needed some cheering up while they were celebrating Mr. Gavin's new charges.”   
  
The tone in his voice suggested that the plan had been both unsuccessful and mortifying. And Miles couldn’t help it: he felt a pang of  _something_  for the kid. A cocky attitude and adventures behind the defense bench weren’t things he could relate to; humiliation and broken trust from a beloved mentor— as well as ambiguity at the mentor's downfall— were things he could understand. And some of Larry’s more clueless comments and questions about his sexual orientation were likely comparisons for Apollo’s misadventures whilst out celebrating with them. He felt, suddenly, sad that he’d missed that evening, knowing he would have surely been invited along. While Larry and Phoenix were ogling women, he and Justice could have sat to the side and discussed what the MASON system and the jury were going to mean for the legal world, and if they hadn’t been up for intellectual shop talk, they could have made cutting comments about other patrons’ dress sense.  
  
“Oh dear,” Miles offered. “If it’s any consolation, he’s just announced his undying love to a woman named Iris—“  
  
“I’ve heard about her,” Justice said. “She was the darkhaired woman who was sitting across the room from me—“  
  
Miles just nodded. The thought of Iris still left him as confused and melancholy as he’d been nearly eight years ago back in Hazakura. He’d defended her. He hadn’t trusted her outright, but was prepared to put everything aside because Wright believed in her and cared about her, and like the loyal, ever-loving friend who would never be realised as a love interest, he’d stood up for her in the interest of making Wright happy. He’d half expected  _them_  to be the ones getting married. Instead, the expected shock—and it was always best to plan for these things—never came and was announced years afterward, involving a whole new cast of people. It was just as disruptive—and unexpected—and terrifying—as an earthquake.   
  
He longed to change the subject, but Justice offered a slight smile—was it kindness or pity?—Miles had never been good at reading people—as though he understood. “I’ve never understood people who hook up at weddings,” he said.   
  
Miles nodded emphatically. “It’s tasteless,” he agreed. 

Justice looked off in the direction where Larry’s voice had come from, and took a swig from the bottle in his hand.  
  
“Nearly as bad as drinking straight out of a bottle of red wine,” he said. There was a dry, sarcastic drawl in his voice. Drinking in such a fashion had been a key element in clearing Wright of murder. And he couldn’t help but remember stupid little details like that, could he?  
  
“At a wedding, even,” Justice said, picking up on the joke. “It’s a bit more acceptable when you’re in a restaurant playing piano, isn’t it?” He blinked innocently, and that was the point where Miles realised his attitude towards the younger man had shifted: he liked him. A little bit, at least.

 

.:.

 

His voice was growing giddier and more confident; gone was the bitter sarcasm and the argument. Miles wasn’t sure what exactly had shifted in him, when they become merged onto the same side in his mind. He watched as Apollo took another swig of wine from the bottle, and then looked at him. “Want some?”   
  
Miles wanted to say no. In his mind there were two conflicting sides trying to put forth their case—on one side was someone calling himself logic, arguing that he had been planning on getting drunk to survive this godforsaken event anyway and that he’d already done his bit for Phoenix Wright by attending, agreeing to be best man and making a short speech a few hours ago.

On the other— _another_  side calling itself logic, the argument went along the lines of that it would be foolish to drink to excess at an event where he had clear emotional ties and secrets that may not have been as tightly-reined as he thought they were. 

But he was already starting to ignore the sound of the second “voice,” because it sounded like an ungodly amalgam of Franziska and Manfred.   
  


 

At least he and Apollo had agreed: picking up at other people’s weddings was tasteless. And it was equally tasteless to get intoxicated to the point where one forgot about manners and decorum—it was the sort of thing that—

“But— _I love you_!” Larry’s over-exaggerated yelp of rejection stopped him midthought.  
  
“And there is precisely why I have to decline your generous offer,” Miles said, offering a trademark winning courtroom bow.   
  
“You’d prefer to be _sober_ listening to him?”   
  
Again, Miles had no answer. Justice had a half-way decent point there, and the wine was flowing freely.  
  
“We probably should go back inside,” he said when the older man didn’t answer. “They’re probably doing speeches and things which we’ll be expected to raise a toast to. Or something.”

 

  
Sounding entirely unimpressed with the notion, Apollo walked towards the door, sneakily tucking the bottle of wine under his jacket. Miles smiled at him, and headed towards his own seat; he was mildly disappointed to see Apollo sit down a distance away, and offered a forced—but slightly tipsy—did the tipsiness make it friendlier?—smile to Wright as he sat.

“You look like you’re enjoying yourself,” Wright said. Was there any suggestion in that comment? It was evident that Wright had been drinking: there was a bubbly, not-quite-there sheen to his eyes, and his face looked relaxed. Thalassa say down next to him, looking perfectly demure, not saying anything. The sight of her, and her apparent coolness, only added to Miles’ irritation. He could admit to himself that it was futile and childish, but a part of him looked at her maintained cool façade and wanted to see it tarnished; he wanted to see how she’d react to leaked topless pictures and the media suggesting that her relationship with Machi Tobaye wasn’t completely wholesome.  
  
He was a wretch, and he knew it.   
  
Machi Tobaye had played ringbearer, and he and Trucy sat to his right, happily drinking non-alcoholic champagne and talking about how  _romantic_  the Wright-Grammarye getting together story was. Their conversation was grating, and considering it as deeply as Miles was—because it stopped him thinking about the man sitting right in front of him and his celebrity wife— Miles was distracted, realising yet again how out of place he was amongst all this. He turned around, surveying the rest of the party, as Valant Grammarye stepped onto the stage for his speech.

 

Miles knew nothing of the man, though found his voice thoroughly obnoxious. It didn’t help that within the first thirty seconds of the speech, he’d already made more references to himself than to Thalassa, though shutting the voice out in his mind, and paying attention to little details in the man’s face, Miles was reminded of Apollo; they did share some striking resemblance—  
  
He turned automatically, eyes scanning the darkened hall for Apollo’s table. Apollo wasn’t listening to the speech; he was shrouded in darkness, at the Superfluous Guests table (Franziska was busy consoling a grown-up Pearl Fey for some reason—Miles vaguely remembered Pearl having an obsession with Wright and his assistant—her sister—being a couple, so it might have been about that) eyes down in front of him, writing into his journal, aided by the candlelight from the centrepiece in front of him.   
  
He longed to switch places with him. Justice belonged here, at the Inner Circle table, with the bridal party; he was  _family_. He should have been sitting back there, hidden and lost in his own thoughts.   
  
Not that Justice would let him, though. Justice seemed perfectly happy not having to be a part of things. Miles wasn’t sure if he was sad for him—or mildly jealous. Or… something else. Forcing himself to look at Phoenix and Thalassa as they smiled through Valant’s terrible speech, he wondered if Apollo Justice had noticed him turn around. That could be… awkward. The kid was ten years younger than him, and at  _that_  age—and with  _that_  sharp sarcasm, likely to—  
  
He poured himself another glass of wine, and gulped it down probably too quickly to be polite, but he didn’t care. This was the easiest way to remove himself from the situation which didn’t involve physically leaving the building. 

 

Thalassa was whispering something to Phoenix, and the two of them chuckled. It made his cheeks burn—it was likely a comment made in all innocence—or about Valant’s speech—but it stung. It felt like they were only rubbing in his face the fact that they had something which he would never be a part of. Turning away, Miles looked back to the table behind him. Apollo wasn’t applauding as Valant left the stage—those who were seemed to be applauding the speech’s end rather than the speaker—but he’d seen everything. When his eyes caught Miles’, offering a smile that could be almost sympathetic, Miles looked away awkwardly. Last thing he needed was pity from that kid who'd clearly seen him now. Or misinterpretation. Or actual interpretation because the kid was a fucking  _spook_ who could see right through everything people did.  
  
Amongst the applause and the private in-joke which the Wrights (yes, she’d taken his name something that irritated Miles without him even completely knowing why) shared, Miles managed to consume nearly another glass of wine. It coursed through his system, giving him happiness and warmth and a strange sort of comfort for a spell—before, of course, his realisation that he still hadn’t fully recovered from the last near-bottle he’d consumed after his own, earlier speech.   
  
More than anything, he longed to look down at his watch, but he couldn’t do that. And it frustrated him. Greatly.

 

Another glass of wine saw him through the next speech—it was wide-eyed sweetness as Trucy recalled the tale of how her daddy and her mommy met and connected and how she now had a family and could finally see her daddy happy—Miles knew he had no right to resent  _that_ , yet still—he did. His departure from that world seven years ago was based around a number of things, but one had been his own consideration for Wright who was going through a lot in dealing with the falling out from Hazakura. The last thing he needed was to be around, to see and long to help a suffering Wright, knowing full well that matters were only further complicated due to the unrequited sexual interest he’d had in the man since… it had been a long time, and what had seemed a noble act now felt like throwing away a chance at happiness. He finished the glass of wine in front of him.  
He listened to the way Trucy told the story; she was used to being on stage and seemed at ease with presenting—well—magic—to an audience. The kid was a natural. He wondered what had caused Apollo to prefer a more background position in things, and turned around again to watch him; he didn’t look impressed, but his face was whitewashed into unreadable. Was he paying attention for his sister’s benefit or for his own—everyone else at the table was watching what she was saying, and his lack of attention would have shown. The journal, amusingly enough, was still open in front of him, though its words were guarded with a strategically-placed forearm.  
  
When Trucy was applauded, he joined the clapping—between sips of another glass of wine—and glanced back at Apollo to see his reactions. It felt like they were two kindred spirits in a way, the only two people in the entire building who didn’t particularly want to be there and who were somewhat performing for an audience, though with no stage. When Apollo looked back and smiled ( _Could the kid read minds, too?_ ), it seemed to unfortunately coincide with Wright turning around to notice as Thalassa gave Trucy an enormous—and hopefully distracting—hug.  
  
“Checking out my stepson there, are you, Edgeworth?”

It had been meant as a joke. Surely. It had been incredibly offensive, though, and quite possibly loud enough for others nearby to hear. While there had been a lewd sparkle in his eye suggesting that the comment was little more than an inappropriate joke, Miles was caught between wanting to hit him and scathingly slice him to pieces. While he tried to decide which it would be—

“I know you’re getting lonely in your later years, Edgeworth, but  _really_?”  
  
Clearly, Wright was drunk. Thankfully, neither Trucy nor Thalassa had heard anything, though Trucy turned around only a second later. “What?” she asked. Perfect innocence. “I did okay, didn’t I, Daddy?” 

"Your father was just chastising me for having to make an early night of it,” Miles said in a perfectly controlled, thoroughly cutting fashion. He turned to Trucy. “Your speech was beautiful,” he said, before looking back at Wright, and offering, in a joking voice laced with poison, “Far lovelier than this rogue, at least, deserves.”

It was all laughter and handshakes for a moment, and Miles realised—as he stepped away from the table—that he _was_  thoroughly intoxicated. Not world-spinning-vomiting-in-the-fountain drunk, but walking-with-concentration-and-blurting-out-inappropriate-things drunk. He needed to get out. He needed the chill of the fresh air hitting his face, a cool drink, a taxi back to the hotel room—an indulgence he’d thought of earlier, thanks to the fact that the function seemed deliberately, irritatingly as far away from civilisation that it might as well have been Kurain—and a good night’s sleep. He did not need this _garbage_.

 

  
As he walked to the exit, he raised an eyebrow at Franziska who appeared to be embarrassingly boastful of her achievements in a discussion with what appeared to be Wright’s former assistant. She probably was about as sober as he was. He sighed, looking around the room suspiciously lest he be approached by someone else wanting to engage with him. There was no one—they were busy amongst themselves, and he could depart unnoticed. The feeling was liberating and melancholy at the same time.

He did not notice the heavy door silently shutting, and the movement of the steps behind him. 

 

 

 

 

 

“Hey!” 

He didn’t turn around. He recognised the voice, but he didn’t want conversation. Nor did he want the reason—well, part of the reason—for his departure—to follow him and ask what was wrong. If the kid hadn’t heard it himself.

So he walked. He walked so far that he could only assume that Justice has stopped following him and had returned to the reception hall or had snuck off to drink the remainder of the wine by himself in the gardens somewhere. He walked down the driveway, out the ornate black gates and onto the curb—cabs were already tipping one another off that guests were leaving, evidently, and a couple of media vans hung around the edges, like a dog under a dinner table, waiting for some scrap to be dropped—or thrown—its way.

 

Miles cringed; he hated the media and was aware that he’d been drinking. Whenever the media became involved, it was like being back in grade school again, being noticed and praised for things that he didn’t feel entitled to attention for. It reminded him of his later teenage years, when he was terrified that the slightest—anything—would be a dead giveaway about what he really was and that somehow all his flaws and sins would be discovered and shared by the cameras and journalists around him; that he and Manfred would be torn to pieces by an unforgiving and unjust—and emotionally-charged audience. 

And then there was the fact that for the most part, journalists happened to be incredibly irritating people. 

 

A light rain had been threatening since the afternoon, too, and in combination with the cool breeze, its moisture made him realise something: he’d left his coat somewhere back in the hall. He was disappointed: it had been both tailor-made and an import, and it wasn’t exactly the sort of coat one really had an excuse to purchase when one didn’t attend enough formal events to warrant that sort of clothing. It was only something else to remember this irritating event for, he thought, as a cab appeared at his side with close to psychic timing. Opening the door, enquiring as if the destination of the hotel would be acceptable—for which he received a willing nod and a smile—he was about to sit down in the back seat when he felt someone grab at his shoulder. 

“I’m coming too—“ It was the typical speak-first-speak-fast way of a defence attorney, Miles thought. Why the  _hell_  was Justice following him  _here_? Didn't he understand simple civil association due to a shared setting?

About to argue, Miles turned to face him, and realised that he couldn’t. Justice looked far too out of place—and earnest, standing there, wearing the jacket he’d been lamenting the loss of only moments before, shyly presenting the bottle of wine he’d pilfered and tucked into one of the inside pockets. The fare to the hotel was worth less than the jacket—and the wine—and he couldn’t entirely deny that he was grateful for Justice’s effort. He was starting to develop a melancholy, drunken realisation that he actually wanted company. 

“Get in.”

Justice, to his credit, didn’t say anything, nor did the cab driver. At that moment, Miles didn’t want to talk about anything; there were no words to release what was spiralling through his head, and he was worried that if he attempted to, he’d say something stupid or offensive or cringe-inducingly honest. From the front of the cab, an old song from years ago played; a forgotten one-hit wonder which, like himself, everyone had loved ten years ago. Now, it feel suitably depressing, and Miles allowed the cab to creep on as he watched raindrops nestle themselves into one another before their descent down the outside of the glass. It was like they met up, came together, and slipped off the edge as one—

“Um, where exactly are we going, Mr. Edgeworth?” Apollo was sitting forward as he asked, tugging at the sleeves of the jacket in an attempt to remove it. He’d sat the bottle of wine on the seat in the space between them, and looked down at it, as if considering the urge to take a swig.

“I'm staying at a hotel,” Miles told him quietly, paranoid now that the cab driver could hear everything or that Justice would start drinking and they'd be thrown out of the cab. 

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

 

He was grateful that the cab ride was silent, and that the assurance about the hotel had been enough to silence Justice. But he was now burdened with another problem, he realised: he’d made no sort of contingency plan for what to do should he leave the wedding with an angry little defence attorney in tow, and a blood-alcohol reading which would have seen him ejected from the office had he shown up for work like this. The latter problem would only go away with time, he realised, from the few instances of intoxication he’d survived—the former, he thought dismally, as he paid the cab driver and left a generous tip—not so much. 

 

 

When they stepped out into the rain, Apollo Justice looked at him expectantly, still wearing his coat, still clutching the journal under one arm and the bottle of wine in his other hand. The rain continued to soak through them as the door closed and the cab drove off. And maybe it was because he disliked seeing his coat being rained on, or maybe it was because the way the rain ruined Justice’s perky, eccentric hairstyle only added to his melancholy, he gestured towards him. 

“Come on,” he said. And Justice followed, like a stray puppy brought in from the rain. 

 

 

.:.

 

“Do you always stay at the Hylatton?”

They were travelling upstairs in the elevator, its smooth hydraulics not enough to ease the queasiness in Miles’ stomach. He’d have opted for the stairs as he usually did, but this time he had company—another irritation about having Justice along for the ride was that he couldn’t just go about his business ordinarily. Justice would have wanted an explanation, and might have stumbled on the stairs drunkenly—and Miles wouldn’t know what to do with him.

   
He was peering around the elevator as though it were an exotic spaceship, though, thankfully not realising Miles’ tension. “Mr. Gavin used to like the Hylatton hotel chain, actually,” he chattered, apparently oblivious. “He said they were like the McGregor’s burger chain—not that he ever ate there— but that you always know what to expect. There’s a consistency, no matter where you are, he said.”

  
Miles didn’t said anything, though noticed the reverence with which he quoted his former mentor and couldn't help but understand. But his focus was elsewhere— on not releasing the tidal wave of projectile vomit he was worried was going to rush forth when the elevator hit the twentieth floor, and on quelling his nerves and not letting the younger man see the whites of his eyes and know about a fear he should have been well and truly over. Even after all these years, after all that therapy, and after all that exposure—and when  _drunk_ — elevators still brought out the terror. 

  
“Of course, that’s quite funny, since there was never any consistency with, um, him, when it, er, came to, um, some things.” Turning slightly, Miles could see the tinge of colour appearing on Justice’s cheeks. He could tell that he, too, was drunk, but was wondering why the conversational chatter. They didn’t need any of this…

 

“Sometimes people can notice things in others which are inconsistent with their own behaviour,” Miles offered, concentrating on nothing. “Every so often some of those people turn out to be those we work closely with.” 

It was frustratingly awkward; he’d have hoped that with all the alcohol he’d consumed, he’d have fallen into that place of not quite caring what was going on around him; but rather, he now seemed to have acquired a companion with whom the situation was… well, to say complex was a bit of an understatement. And then there was the elevator, and the drunkenness, and he couldn’t be sure which demanded more of his attention and focus: alcohol had an awful way of muddying  _that_ , too. 

Thankfully, the elevator was the first to exit his concerns, when it stopped with a quiet “ping” and the heavy doors slid open. At least they were out of that hideous steel-and-glass coffin and he could  _think_.

 

  
Justice brought out a combination of feelings in him, and amidst those, he was realising, as he watched the way the younger man walked beside him, was a flutter of hope: he hadn’t been in this sort of situation for what felt like a very long time. Of course, the “this sort of situation” was only in his view of how it would  _appear_  to anyone who was looking in from the outside; the fact that he had returned to a penthouse suite in a luxury hotel with a—pained him as it did to admit it—very attractive—young man, was mere coincidence on his part rather than anything else. There wasn’t— _couldn’t_ —be anything in it. Even in his intoxicated haze, and wondering how Justice would react to the room’s interior—he had an awareness that to  _do anything_  tonight—or _ever_ , actually—with Wright’s stepson would be thoroughly stupid. Not that Justice was at all of that inclination, anyway, he reassured himself. Wright had tactlessly mentioned their similar experiences with their respective mentors, but that was hardly suggestive of anything.

 

Swipe card in hand, he read the number on the door as they walked out of the elevator and down the corridor in silence. The carpet and the soft, impersonal décor managed to mute sound; even their footsteps were inaudible, and it only added to the effect of surreality.

  
Miles wasn’t pleased: everything he did was usually meticulously planned, and everything about this, with the exception of the hotel room being booked—had deviated from his plans. And now, standing next to him was—

 

“I’ve never seen a room like  _this_ , Mr. Edgeworth.” 

Apollo Justice was tipsy. If the fact that he was still huddled under a coat that looked far too big and extravagant for him—with a bottle of wine tucked underneath it—wasn’t a dead giveaway, the expression in his voice was. 

“Really?” Miles was aware that his voice was curt and unimpressed, and found himself regretting bringing the kid along with the trip. He cursed himself for not just thanking him for his coat as he got into the cab. He wanted sleep. He wanted more alcohol. He wanted to kick his shoes off and channel surf between vintage re-runs of  _The Steel Samurai_ and terrible adult entertainment. When he’d made the booking, the woman on the phone had asked if he wanted the channel on his cable and he’d obliged in a fashion which somehow wasn’t directly asking for _rather specific_ porn—something he’d been proud of at the time. And now, that he was crawling back to bed, cold, miserable and in need of distraction—he could praise himself for the decision. 

There was just one problem.

Justice flicked on a light switch, and peered around the room, his eyes widening at the enormous television, the not-so-mini minibar, and the gigantic ensuite through the double doors to his right. “This is—like—a—“ ignoring the way Miles was staring out the window into the darkness—only accented by the movement of raindrops falling through the sky—he continued—“ _honeymoon suite_.” 

He laughed awkwardly. Miles didn’t say anything, though he scanned around the room. Justice had left his journal on an end table, and the bottle of wine on top of it. 

“I felt that if I  _had_  to sleep overnight here, in the kind of climate which could possibly make me  _catch something_ , I wanted to stay somewhere where I was certain they’d have heating.” Why the  _hell_  was he bothering to explain? It was none of Justice's business. He could have just as easily chosen the penthouse suite because it was  _nice_  and because the thought of  _them_  sleeping together— if they got much sleep— in there was one he didn't want to consider. 

“And you don’t think the heating would be adequate downstairs, Mr. Edgeworth?” Apollo giggled, his eyes twinkling mischievously. 

 

“One can never be certain about these things. My reasoning was that if I paid for a high-end room, I would get the perks that came with it such as climate control.” He watched as Justice started removing the coat, and gestured towards the ensuite. “There are a few clothes hangers on the back of the door in there, if you don’t mind—“

He was surprised when Apollo made the effort to do just that, and when Apollo returned, hanging the clothes hanger over the door knob to the exit, he couldn’t help but smile. Even tipsy, he still seemed eager to please. Miles was tempted to go against all commonly accepted ideas about etiquette and ask him to go to the wardrobe and retrieve his slippers, too, and perhaps the bathrobe, just for the sheer indulgence of having someone do things for him. It reminded him of the days when Gumshoe would bumble along behind him, though, and that thought brought with a sense of awkward discomfort; he hadn't seen Gumshoe in a lot time and wondered how his former assistant would react to the passage of time. He frowned, sitting on the bed, waiting.

 

“Would you like a drink, Mr. Edgeworth?” 

  
_Yes. But I’d like you to_ leave _before that._  


 

Unable to work out how to explain that to him, and hearing Wright’s voice in the back of his mind, chiding him gently—  _Drinking alone now, Edgeworth? Still haven’t grown out of your teenage angst, have you?—_  he nodded. Apollo Justice needed no direction to find glasses above the bar fridge and to pour two glasses of wine. Without offering Miles his glass, he took a sip from his own as the older man raised an eyebrow. “It’s usually customary to offer the other person their glass fir—“

 

“Sorry.” The pink had come back into his cheeks and he put his glass down. “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

 

“You were a teenage alcoholic?” Miles asked dryly, an eyebrow raised.

 

Justice looked nervous. He didn’t smile or argue—his gaze just shifted away from the other man’s. “My mentor used to prefer it if _I_  were the first to have a drink, that’s all.”

 

It was a harrowing reminder of the kid’s past. It was the sort of blurted-out, uncomfortable truth that he remembered admitting to years ago, even after Manfred was well and truly gone. He could accept, at least, that little fragments of crazy could be trained into someone well enough for them to completely warp a person; behaviour you stopped considering after awhile and saw nothing wrong with because it was just part of your normal activity. He probably would have found that level of conditioning fascinating—perhaps even useful—had he not been subjected to it himself. He frowned. “Did you ever ask why?” 

Less than a moment after asking the question, he brought a hand to his mouth, covering it. “I apologise,” he muttered. “That was thoroughly intrusive of me—“ And he wouldn’t have normally asked such a question—not in this sort of interaction, anyway. He wasn’t investigating a crime scene and challenging a witness, he was meeting with an associate. A  _friend_. A friend by proxy, anyway. 

  
“I realised afterwards,” Justice said, and there was a wobble in his voice which made Miles wonder if he’d ever discussed this topic with anyone else—or if he were just drunk. “That it was his paranoia—that even though he was spying on so many people, he was worried that someone could have tampered with his drinks.” He blinked. “Atroquinine will be noticeable almost instantly—“ Miles nodded as Apollo continued—“So I guess…”

 

“You don’t have to keep going—I shouldn’t have—“

 

“I never minded.” There was the unspoken implication that he was willing to risk death for his mentor, which made Miles seize up uncomfortably. “He introduced me to so many things that way. Wines. Spirits. Tea, even.” Trying to keep his voice steady, it was his eyes that gave him away, revealing the fact that something about his mentor still hit a nerve.   
Miles wasn’t used to eye contact like this: he would casually search a suspect for body language; the devil was in the details, Manfred had once said, and his gaze would shift, meaning he could easily avoid the disturbing intimacy of eye contact during conversation and potentially learn things. 

 

But maybe it was in part due to the alcohol, or perhaps his brain was advising him to focus on one part of Justice which would be more savoury—and less open to incorrect interpretation, than if his eyes darted around frantically as though apprehensive with want for him—  _No. No. NO—_  but he could see the way they were wide and nervous as he spoke. “He wasn’t the monster everyone said he was.” 

  
Miles only nodded; it was as though now that he’d realised he could admit it to someone—and that that someone understood on a level, he could keep talking about it. He didn’t know what to do: he didn’t particularly want to rehash old memories himself, he doubted his skills as a counsellor in these circumstances; hell, he didn’t even want Justice  _here_ , but he couldn’t just  _do nothing_.

 

Stretching across to pass Miles the untouched glass of wine—and to grab his own, he took a gigantic gulp of the plum-red liquid. “He  _was_  nicer to me than Mr. Wright.”

 

Not wanting to betray Wright’s memory—but maybe, perhaps, his old friend and the being he’d held a candle for for all those years  _had_  changed—Miles only frowned. He wasn’t sure what he was bothered by; he knew as well as many did that the truth could hurt and that people could change and that heroes could fail. He’d already had enough harsh lessons on  _that_. And in all fairness, Wright’s little jokes, his stabs to the self-esteem, were starting to irritate him. He’d desperately tried doing the right thing, and disappearing, and Wright had just  _had_  to make that comment about him hitting on his stepson, didn’t he? It was a darkly hilarious twist of fate that here they were now, in a luxury hotel room together, drinking and talking about, well, men they'd had _past relations_ with.

 

"Wright can be—“ He tried to think of a description which would both do the man justice, and not reveal any deeper attachment to him. 

 

Justice took an all-too-revealing swig of his wine, and pointedly avoided Miles’ eyes. “Wright can be a bastard,” he said in a voice that suggested there was genuine rage lying beneath the attempt at sunny, careless humour. Was he gauging for a reaction? Still remembering the snide “joke” from Wright before he’d left which had the stinging effect of a slap across the face, Miles frowned. 

 

“I know you don’t feel that way,” Justice said, “But to be honest, you probably haven’t seen how selfish he can be.” He continued, shameless. “Maybe he was different when you remembered him years ago, but— he’s arrogant. He’s cold. Everything he  _does_  is about outsmarting, out-doing  _everyone_.”

 

Miles merely nodded, only realising his treachery in doing so once it was too late. He, of course, had heard the story about Wright’s downfall and subsequent rise from the ashes, but he’d heard it in Wright’s glowingly arrogant narrative, casting himself as the betrayed hero, who was stylishly out for revenge and to make wrongs right with his brain and a few slick moves. He could see how Apollo might find that irritating, especially since his mentor—whom he clearly still had some level of concern for—had been brought down in the whole mess.

 

But still, he didn’t want to indulge in a discussion about Wright—doing so under these circumstances could be  _inconvenient_. “He’s always had a touch of the arrogant about him, though: many would argue that’s part of his charm.” Miles sighed, sipping his drink, allowing the alcohol to sit in his mouth for a moment whilst considering what he’d just said. There was a definite stone fruit—plum, cherry—note in the wine—and some sort of heady, almost floral flavour which he couldn’t quite pinpoint. He swallowed, realising that he was  _still_  able to keep rein on his thoughts despite the chemical interference of the drink. 

 

“One could have said the same thing about _my_ mentor, using that logic.” Apollo’s voice was solid and stern and thoroughly annoyed, and it swaggered with a strange confidence and just-released rage, which may very well have, Miles thought, been brewing for a long time prior. “Mister  _Wright_ ,” he sneered, “Who used my debut, who puppeteered me like a  _thing—_  happily sent my mentor to death row motivated purely by revenge for the same thing.” 

 

Miles cleared his throat. Previously Apollo Justice had come across as a good-natured, enthusiastic, and slightly awkward young man, with a crackling, barely-controlled energy about him, but nothing like this. Of course he knew everyone had deeper, darker levels, a side no one showed the world—he just hadn’t expected this to be Apollo’s. 

 

“There was the question of guilt, though.” 

 

Justice frowned. “I don’t think it has occurred to anyone else that perhaps nothing is as clean-cut as it looks on the surface. No one ever found out who killed my grandfather, did they?” 

 

Miles didn’t say anything. He could only recall those few days of confusion, pacing the holding cell in the police station after being accused of Hammond’s murder, his brain starting to give birth to impossible thoughts, his reality turning liquid, his growing wonder about his own innocence. Release and—as much as he hated to admit it—Wright’s assistance—had helped him grab back onto events as they had occurred, but in those hours in the cell, his brain concocted possible truths. Perhaps he had murdered the man, after all. He could have killed; he’d done so in the past—

 

It was all about absolving the one man who’d saved him at the time, who’d pulled him from the claws of despair. And he knew, no one in those days could have easily convinced him that Manfred—  _his_  Manfred, teacher, father figure, saviour—and yes, later down the track, lover—was conspiring against him and had killed in his place. Perhaps Apollo was still pacing in that metaphorical cell. He sighed again, and sipped his wine. Here was an intelligent young man who clearly had faith in evidence and who would go to the ends of the earth to uncover the truth and who’d not allowed his personal feelings to become involved in his work, and now—

 

"Wright doesn’t know it, but I’m helping Mr. Gavin launch an appeal against his sentence,” Justice said defiantly. “I’m going to undo at least  _some_  of his damage.” He was smiling, determined, like he’d already outsmarted the other side. “He deserves to know that I still care for what he did for me all those years ago.”

Miles wasn’t going to argue with him, and he shifted on the bed awkwardly. There would be no dissuading him. And in a way, it was more proactive—albeit misguided and heartbreakingly  _stupid—_  than his own reaction to Manfred’s betrayal. Apollo was still standing, still fighting. He himself had left a suicide note and disappeared to Europe. It had been a strange irony that spending much of his time in a state of inebriation had made him too disorientated and scattered to attempt suicide, and by circumstance, his brief period of alcoholism had likely saved his life.

Of course, Justice wasn’t going to know that. No one knew that. He finished his glass, desperate to change the subject. He didn’t want to hear this; he knew that at the end of the day, just like Justice, he was blinded by emotion, and would undoubtably inform Wright of what he’d been told. And Wright would go back into that obsessive autodrive; he’d fight back with everything—and every _one_  available at his disposal. Hell, there was probably already a secret investigation into Magnifi Grammarye’s death already underway, another card for Wright to whip out of his sleeve—

 

  
But still, Miles could understand the sentiment. And it was touching and shattering all at once; here was someone who was faced with a situation which was hauntingly similar to his own, yet he was handling it in a completely assertive fashion.

 

Even though it was wrong. Even though it was sentimental. Even though it was stupid. And even though Wright would probably pull him to pieces in front of an audience because Wright’s sense of justice and his love of the law—and theatrics-- was unshakable and brilliant. And of course, it was highly likely that Justice already knew this, as he’d known that he was being used as a guineapig for drinking glasses. And he didn’t care. 

 

  
Miles wanted to say something, but he refused to get caught up in it; this was some mess involving egos and defense attorneys and it all had nothing to do with him. Not knowing what words to offer, all he could do was nod his head and pour himself some more wine. 

“You think it’s stupid, don’t you?” Justice asked. His voice slurred and swayed awkwardly, and as though he’d only just realised it—and longed to misguidedly mask it, he slurped down the remainder of his glass. Miles frowned, but distracted, longing for some outside stimuli—refilled the glass, watching the deep plum liquid appear with a satisfying trickle. 

“It’s good wine,” he said. 

 

Miles nodded. Part of his brain was occupied with the immediate concern—that clearly Justice was both drunk and vulnerable—another glass of wine wasn’t going to change this— and that he had to be  _somewhere_ this evening—and that he still would have preferred that somewhere to  _not be here_. 

But there was also the growing awareness—also awkward and worrying— that there was something  _about_  him which Miles couldn’t quite ignore. The way he was now sprawled across the bed on his abdomen, his feet dangling over the side and his shoes kicked off somewhere, drunk and relaxing and yet full of ideas— there was an innocence there, a freshness which he was unaccustomed to. Ignoring, of course, the big brown expressive eyes, the youthful and somewhat handsome face, and his delicate—but not waifish—figure. There was no denying it: the kid was attractive. He didn’t have the same sort of forceful, look-at-me intensity of, say Wright, nor the regal features of Manfred, and he hardly resembled what the media seemed to think was the pinnacle of male beauty, but there was a sensible, clean-white-sheets crispness about him, an earnest, practical—and yet  _delicious—_  for the person with the right tastes—look about him.

 

Added, of course, was the taboo: with that fresh-faced innocence came the idea that it was positively  _depraved_  to even begin to imagine what he looked like under the dress shirt and what sorts of noises he would come out with when he was on the brink of orgasm. And yet the more Miles realised that it was  _perverse_  to be thinking about him like this, the less he could stop the thoughts. 

It was wrong—so wrong that perhaps it left room for intrigue and for his mind to entertain the same taboo what-ifs his teenage years had been occupied with when it came to Manfred—but had he believed in fate, or romance, or any such foolishness, he’d have wondered if fate had brought them together, what, with their mutual issues with Wright, and their similar mentor problems. 

“I know,” he said with a nod. Sober, he’d have possibly asked if Justice could identify notes—or perhaps not, because maybe that’s exactly the sort of thing Kristoph Gavin did and it would be  _wrong_ , but maybe—

“You know, Mr. Gavin taught me about wine,” he said, the anger still obvious in his voice. “Mr.  _Wright_  would  _drink_  wine like an alcoholic—but—“ And as though it just occurred to him, he paused. “Why the  _hell_ was my sister allowed to live with a single man with an obvious alcohol problem?”

Miles frowned again. The way Justice said that was unfair. Sure, Wright was irresponsible and disorganised—and selfish, and inconsiderate, and oblivious to etiquette and other people’s feelings—but Miles—and Trucy, it seemed—believed he had at least had his heart in the right place.

  
“At least she wasn’t snatched out of state care by a man who despised her father and was only doing it for revenge—“

 

Apollo blinked, suddenly aware of what was implied. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. There was a slight growl of his insides, which instead of providing much needed comic relief, only made the situation even more awkward. After a moment, he offered probably the only condolence he could—“If it makes you feel any better, I was a ward of the state, too… you know that. But I was there for a few years.” Despite the playful tone, he continued. “And then they let the foster families have at me.“ 

It was one of those rare moments where Miles felt he understood. He’d not known foster families, but he’d known the loss of a real one and then the treachery of a fake one. Did that make up for years of being shuffled around foster families?

“When Mr. Gavin got me out of that; he was happy to be my  _guardian_ , it was like…” He looked puzzled. “It wasn’t like having a family. Families are… like this, I guess. Messy and noisy and informal. Mr. Gavin and I didn’t really have that.”

“You don’t need to explain it,” Miles offered quietly. “I think I understand.”

 

Apollo nodded. “Mr. Wright knew what happened between Mr. Gavin and I,” he said bitterly. “He said it was  _wrong_. He  _laughed_  about it. He made me out to sound like some stupid kid, like Mr. Gavin and I had the same sort of relationship as he and my sister do.” The anger in his voice was only growing more intense. “And yeah—“ he continued, “It  _was_  weird. But don’t you  _think_ \--“ Miles watched as his hands started balling into fists—“that since he wasn’t exactly asking Trucy to test  _his_  drinks and Trucy didn’t apply to him for an internship, he would be smart enough to appreciate that things were a bit different in our case?”

That was a fair complaint about Wright, that seeing things from another’s point of view was hardly one of his strengths. It could make him seem perfectly sociopathic sometimes, even though it was probably more due to his blinkered myopic outlook on the world—ironically something  _he’d_  been attacked for. And something Wright had accused Kristoph Gavin of, too. Perhaps they were all just unhappy little islands of misunderstanding, too wrapped up in their own desire to win. 

Justice, however, seemed different. Even though he was drunk and rambly at the moment, his passion for truth and fairness seemed to be far more openminded than most people’s.  _Imagine him as a judge,_  Miles found himself thinking randomly,  _We’d never see the end of a trial. But there would be no accusations of corruption at all…_

“It’s all right,” Miles said to him quietly. He could hear the anger in his voice and was concerned that it would spill over into something physical—or that in his rage and on his way home, somehow it would result in Justice getting hurt in some way. He spied the younger man’s hand on the bed, propping him up, and covered it with his own. It was a gesture intended to be comforting and reassuring, though Justice looked away, bashful and scandalised, and Miles pulled his hand back as though he’d been stung by something.  _God. Did he think I was trying to—_  The sense of wrongness had only come back with a vengeance, but the way Apollo looked away suggested that he wasn’t the only one aware of it. 

 

The last thing Miles expected Justice to do was to laugh, though, which he did; a dry, coy chuckle paired with a filthy smirk. It made him feel oddly humiliated. 

“Has it been a while for you?” he asked. Raising his eyebrows. “Or has Wright convinced you that I’m some damaged kid who Kristoph Gavin abused throughout his formative years?” 

There was a sneer in his voice which made Miles cringe inwardly. Either Justice was reading body language he wasn’t even aware of using, or he damn well knew the sorts of things that Mr. Wright had said to him. 

Miles didn’t say anything, uncomfortable with the insinuation. He didn’t want to give Justice the satisfaction of having judged correctly. In his tipsiness, he’d reverted to a tried and true tactic of interaction: to challenge. And he was going to  _win_  this one. And he was  _stuck_. Without wanting to spit back that yes, that  _was_  the situation Wright had alluded to—for the first time, he considered the breach in privacy there and flinched—he frowned.  _He’d_  been  _older_. The situation between himself and Manfred had been considerably different. He’d come out of it damaged because of the betrayal—and the betrayal had stretched out far earlier—and was inclusive of much more than a romantic partnership-- and nothing else. 

He blinked, realising the fact that for Apollo, it had been more, too, and that he hadn’t just been a puppet for Kristoph Gavin, whom he still clearly had some level of attachment to—but Wright as  _well_. It still didn’t stop him from being naïve and damaged, though.

 

“I know everyone seems to conveniently forget it, but I do happen to be an  _adult_ , Mr. Edgeworth.” An eyebrow cocked, a dare. And a look in his eyes that may have been—and probably was, Miles decided—influenced by the amount of alcohol he’d consumed—which was undeniably sexual.

It was devastating. In some ways, it felt like an insult to both Justice and to the feelings he’d had for Wright. For longer than he cared to admit to, he’d held back from intimacy with anyone out of fear that he would subconsciously, and unfavourably compare them to his own fantasies of Wright. And the only thing that seemed more pathetic than fantasising about someone who had expressed no interest—beyond teasing flirtations which didn’t actually mean anything—was using someone else as a stand in.

 

  
And yet, sitting here now, watching Justice… There was definitely no mistaking him for Phoenix Wright; they wouldn’t even be mistaken for one another even if Justice grew a foot, adopted Wright’s ridiculous hair style and donned a blue suit. While Wright had been built like himself, broad-shouldered and solid without being either muscular or fat, Justice was slight. While Wright had piercing blue eyes, Justice’s were dark brown—just as striking and emotive—but  _different_. Even little details about Justice didn’t gel with Wright—his voice, his style of arguing, the way features on his face moved—even his delicate, bird-like wrists which seemed out of place with his hands—none of him was Wright. Though none of him, Miles admitted in the depths of his mind, somehere past the part which was screaming about how  _wrong_  this was, was at all off-putting, either.

“And like most single adults, even  _damaged_  ones—“ He spat out the word bitterly and sarcastically—“I have the same sorts of needs as anyone else.”

“A need for histrionic family soap operas isn’t what I’d call normal,” Miles said coldly. Justice was right, irritatingly—it  _had_  been years. But he was still sensible enough to see what could go wrong—assuming Justice was being serious and this wasn’t some sort of nightmarish joke from Wright himself.

“Ob-jec-tion!” There was definitely a stagger and a tucked-away giggle in Justice’s response. “My family has been full of drama long before I came back to this hotel room with you.” He leaned forward, eyes intently focussed on Miles, in the kind of parody of his professional life that was both insulting to their work and highly amusing. The Wright in his fantasies would put up some resistance at first and would display some of the mannerisms Miles was used to seeing in court. He could feel warmth spreading through his face as he realised that perhaps if alcohol weren’t such a key feature of this encounter, some sort of roleplay could be kind of appealing. 

Though if alcohol wasn’t involved, they never would be in this situation. 

Doing the classic courtroom  _point_ , and fuelled by the idea of an argument, Miles raised his own objection. “You, sir,” he said, wagging his index finger slightly—“Are my friend’s stepson.” 

Justice grinned, though his gaze was steely and determined. “Objection! That doesn’t mean that anyone would, um,  _know_. Baseless conjecture.” His voice lowered and he blinked at Miles triumphantly. “Anyone would think it’s been years since you were in  _court_ , too, Prosecutor.” 

He could feel the warmth from his face spreading elsewhere. Was this the way Justice looked in court when pepped up and passionately arguing? He was... curious. There'd always been a bit of an illicit thrill in his mind about defense attornies anyway, which may have at least partially explained his fascination with Phoenix Wright (and, when he cared to admit it, other men whom he'd challenged at the bench). There was an uninhibited passion about most defense attornies— and when there wasn't— such as with Kristoph Gavin— there was untapped potential. 

Wagging his finger and smirking, his brain overridden by the electricity coursing through him, he raised an eyebrow. "If the defence could refrain from personal attacks—"

 

Justice grinned, eyes widening slightly. “Then I humbly retract my last statement,  _Your Honour_.”

And with the look that followed, there was absolutely no question about what was running through his mind. It was sheer unadulterated confidence which Miles remembered possessing in his earlier year—the misspent youth, he joked about, where Manfred had all but convinced him that he was a god in the making. 

Only with Justice, it seemed genuine, and devoid of cruelty and ambition so strong it might have crossed over into corruption if offered a suitable prompt. And there was a sense of flirtatious  _fun_  which came with it; with was the kind of confidence even Wright didn’t possess. But it made him nervous, and he reached for his glass again—what  _else_  was Justice ridiculously confident about? 

  
He wasn’t used to someone else’s confidence causing his own to wither. Normally, in his professional life—which was most of his life when he came to think about it—he held himself not with the over-confident swagger he had in the past, but with the quiet knowledge that he knew who he was, that he had nothing to prove to the world, and that he was merely an agent to bring light to the truth and uncover secrets and lies so justice could be served. He did possess a particular  _flair_ , and many called him arrogant—but that was to be expected and he thought little of it. 

In the rest of his life, in those few fleeting hours away from the office and his cases, and his sister (interacting with her even on a casual basis still felt like work; like her father, she had grown into a relentless workaholic whose need for competition didn’t wane easily, and so, a brief catchup for lunch would usually turn “professional” and tainted with legal debate and shop talk)— he was something else entirely. A spectacular memory, sound knowledge of the law across a variety of jurisdictions and an impressive resume suggesting her was both highly productive and frighteningly intelligent did not necessarily mean social skills. Or confidence. And a lack of familiarity with the casual, informal world outside of work often left Miles not lacking in confidence… but playing the role of the quiet observer. And seeing—and hearing Justice like this brought about that silence.

He looked at the younger man’s face, a sense of feeling like he were a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. Whilst hardly naïve and uneducated, and possessing particular tastes of his own which others may have raised eyebrows at, this particular situation made him nervous. Attractive men made him uncomfortable and he averted his gaze lest he appear too unnervingly interested. And Apollo, it seemed, could see right through him. 

“Does the prosecution have anything they’d like to add?” he asked, his eyes still serious. 

“I—“

The way Justice looked at him then—with his feeble, drunken flailing—caused part of him to melt and a heat to surge through him. It  _had_  been a long time, and now he could all too easily imagine directing himself into Justice’s mouth, shutting him up if not anything else, tangling his hands into that chestnut hair and finding release.

With Wright’s stepson. 

Wright’s  _twenty-something year-old stepson who is over the legal drinking age and practically insisting,_  he reminded himself, though that thought was only mildly comforting. It was still wrong. It was still going to cause a lot of complication he didn’t need—it already  _was_  even though nothing had happened.

 

He frowned, considering the time he and Manfred had discussed the concept of  _mens rea_ , and how a guilty mind alone wasn’t enough to constitute wrongdoing, and how some part of him had felt freed by that because he could fantasise all he wanted to about the older man with no more of that pesky guilt. That conversation had stayed with him and he often remembered it, though this was the first time when he was doing something like this when it popped into his mind. This was…

Justice’s gaze shifted around Miles, sizing him up like he was reading a witness on the stand. He  _knew_. He could see some sort of movement, some sort of microdetail which Miles hadn’t managed to hide. And he wasn’t sure if that was arousing or horrifying, especially given the circumstances. 

When his eyes flickered to his crotch and then back to meet Miles, and he offered, in a triumphant and giddy voice, “May I examine some  _evidence_ , Prosecutor Edgeworth?” he froze. The sheer audacity of him—

 

He had to act. 

 

 

Unexpectedly seizing him by the shoulders and pushing him against the headboard, he crushed his lips to Justice’s cheek, satisfied by the little whimper of shock which escaped the younger man. For once, he had some modicum of control over the situation, for what felt like the first time in the evening.

“I believe this is what you call badgering the defence, Mr. Edge—“

“I could raise an objection, but—“

He kissed him again, his lips moving to Justice’s, swiftly and hungrily, terrified that if he paused for a moment’s thought, he’d psych himself out and stop what he was doing. 

And… he didn’t want to. 

Justice’s body felt good; warm, even beneath the dress shirt and the waistcoat and the cheap formal slacks, and strangely solid for someone so small. And his skin was smooth and soft; either he’d shaved only hours ago or just wasn’t the type to sprout much facial hair—and  _that_  was perfectly appealing, too. He was compact and  _tidy_ , even though there was most definitely a wild streak to him.

And he tasted like red wine and fruitcake, strangely formal and yet with a hint of sweetness—and then there was the way he shifted against Miles' grip and away from him, only to offer a quick—and childish— observation. “Mr. Wright would be pretty mad if he saw this, wouldn’t he?” The movement, ambiguous or otherwise, gave him a guilty thrill and left his body prickling for more. This was what he  _liked_ ; active involvement, a bit of resistance on some level, a vying for power. Like they were equals. Like he and—

There was no hiding the sneer in Justice's voice and the twinkle of delight in his eyes, both of which jolted Miles away from even considering anyone else at the moment. And it did nothing at all to dissuade him; if anything, it had the opposite effect entirely, and Miles kissed again in reply, more forcefully this time, only wondering after his tongue was manoeuvring its way between Justice’s lips and teeth if this was his way of offering a last call before the point of no return. 

He grunted softly, releasing his grip slightly; if Justice was going to back out, if he wasn't entirely certain about doing this, if this was just some childish— albeit interesting— way of somehow sullying the nuptials of earlier— and Justice didn't truly want it, the last thing he needed was to recover from one hell of a hangover and face charges of a worse-than-questionable nature.

He was a little bit surprised— and very pleased, when Justice pushed back with vigour. "You're not having second thoughts are you?" he asked. His voice was jagged and rasping. "This isn't just about  _them_." 

He couldn't even bring himself to name  _them_ , and he spat the word out as though it were an expletive. Miles wanted to pull back, to tell him that he wasn't some sort of gag revenge prank to upset his stepfather with, but Justice's fingers were working their way around the back of his neck, slipping under the back of his cravat, prising the silk loose cleverly. 

"I've always had a thing for distinguished older guys," he murmured. "Do you really think that Mr. Wright's comments have only been directed at  _you_ , Mr. Edgeworth?"

 

A small noise escaped him and he wasn’t entirely sure if it was a strange, mingled sort of desire—after all, he’d felt like that himself when he was younger—and somehow he’d  _become_  the older man—something which was almost depressing and melancholy and strangely flattering—and relief. 

“I remember when he first mentioned you and I did some research and I saw pictures of you and heard about all the King of Prosecutors awards and—“ 

 

  
Miles wasn’t used to having his ego stroked like this in the course of foreplay. Manfred had offered praise—praise and direction which was followed up with more praise when he did what he was supposed to—and a few of his short-term flings had offered nondescript compliments which could have been pasted onto any other sexual encounter. Of all of these, only Colias seemed to be vaguely aware of more than his own erection and the desire to do something with it; but that had ended in a most ugly and unsophisticated fashion, leaving Miles nervous about anyone who paid too much attention to his physical attributes. And that was quite possibly the last thing he wanted to be thinking about right now. 

Loath as he was to admit it to himself—and not that he was going to speak it aloud— Justice’s admiration seemed almost naïve, and refreshingly innocent. And all Miles could do was kiss him again, gripping him more tightly, allowing those fingers to undo the cravat and leave it quite messily draped over his neck.

 

 

The quasi-awkwardness which accompanied Apollo’s statements wasn’t shared by his hands, though, and with one hand trying to unbutton his shirt, and the other tucking a quick thumb under the elastic waistband of his underpants, Miles pulled back slightly. It was disconcerting, such a strange inconsistency, for one thing, and for another, it made him hit a point where he realised other things in the situation weren’t entirely  _right_. There was too much light, for starters: Miles had never liked too much light in the room when he was engaged in physical intimacy. Nor did he like to be undressed—even partially— while his partner remained fully clothed. Even Manfred hadn’t expected that, he thought, as he tucked a hand up and under Justice’s waistcoat, running a hand appraisingly between fabric and hips.  _I’m not removing any more clothes until you do…_  

His fingertips glided across Justice’s skin; beneath the clothes, his skin was still just as soft and perfect as everywhere else Miles had fleetingly encountered. And, god, he might have been small, but he was  _toned_. All that bike-riding hadn’t just saved him a lot of car insurance and fuel money— it had kept him unexpectedly taut beneath his suit. With only a little pressure, Miles could feel the tension growing in his muscles, and he murmured to him, gently encouraging him to slip out of his pants, as he reached, with his other arm, for the bedside touch lamp. 

It was only after he’d switched it off and the room was flooded with inky darkness, and his hand brushed against tightened thigh muscles to a small sigh from Justice— that he realised he was going to regret his usual lights-off policy this time.

He offered a teasing tug down on the back of Justice’s underpants, expecting some resistance, surprised when there was none, and instead felt a shift from Apollo as he rolled his hips against the bed, assisting with his undressing. Between another aggressive kiss, this one initiated by Justice, it seemed, Miles could feel those expert fingers brushing over his own and unzipping him. And then tugging down his pants insistently, revealling how hard he was. 

Neither of them said anything, though the wrongness of the situation had just occurred to him once again. But his voice wasn’t working— it was decidedly doing the wrong thing— stuck somewhere in the back of his throat was a moan which came out in stunted gasps as Apollo’s hands explored him through the fabric.

 

God, he was  _good_. And it  _had_  been a long time for him; he wasn’t just grateful for the attention; he thoroughly relished it. And it seemed that Justice was enjoying himself, too, so any concerns— at the moment— about the implications of this could conveniently be ignored for now. Straining for his touch, Miles pushed forward. “Please,” he murmured quietly, only realising just how helpless he sounded—it was embarrassing, but it seemed to get the desired result as Justice’s hands moved more purposefully. 

Justice didn’t say anything. He shifted around, sitting up on the balls of his feet, naked from the waist down and looking extremely pleased with himself in the half-light that bounced off his features in the last remaining patches of near darkness. Was this some sort of  _act_? Miles wasn’t sure; it wasn’t exactly typical for the men he wound up in bed with to seem this enthused by, well, just  _him_  while he was doing so little, but maybe this was one particular quirk Justice had. He froze up, tense and worried. The other man ran his fingers over the now-obvious erection straining against the silk of his underpants. 

 

Miles whimpered softly. He felt lazy and decadent, and the intoxication from the alcohol was subsiding only to be replaced with _this._  


  
Lying down on the bed noow, shifting out of the way, part of Apollo's shirt brushed against Miles’ inner thigh. “Would you like me to—?” he started to ask, the question—and his moist, warm breath sending a shudder through Miles’ body. 

“ _Yes_.” His voice exited in a hiss as Justice’s fingers toyed with the waistband on his underpants again. 

He could feel his face burning with something akin to desire and a disgusted-with-himself humiliation at the way he was reduced to this, gasping and moaning like some sort of depraved wretch. Thankfully, he realised, there was no way Justice could see this at least, and he found the thought somewhat relaxing. It was close to anonymous—

 

  
“Mr. Edgewo—“ Anonymous be damned. He jumped slightly at Justice’s voice, only to feel the younger man flinch away abruptly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just going to ask if I could—“ And his hands rubbed over the silk of his underpants, suggesting that the next logical step was to remove them. 

 

Nodding in the darkness, only realising as Justice continued anyway that a nod wasn’t noticeable, he murmured quietly to the younger man. Justice paid it no heed and ran a hand down the length of his cock, teasing and appraising at the same time. Bucking against his touch, he caused Justice to comment wryly—“It  _has_  been awhile, hasn’t it?”

 

In a way, he hated it.  _He_  was usually the one in control, and when he hadn’t been—well, things hadn’t gone well. But Justice’s touch—still continuing, the strokes from his hand growing from featherlight to more assertive—was too good—and anyway, it was clearly obvious to Miles that while things didn’t feel absurdly wrong now—this lacked all the strange ethical considerations it had in the von Karma household, and all the awkward intimacy issues he’d had with Colias—it was sure as hell going to feel weird  _afterwards_.

_Might as well hang for a—_  

“What was that, Mr. Edgeworth?”

Had he spoken aloud? He offered nothing, continuing to move with the other man’s strokes.

“Are you—all right?”

God, he sounded so eager to please and earnest. In the darker recesses of his mind, he had no difficulty understanding how Kristoph Gavin would have enjoyed having such a willing assistant. Of course, he had Gumshoe, whose attention sometimes became almost amorous in concern, but—

 

Thinking about Gumshoe now made his body hesitate, and Justice seemed perfectly in tune with this.

 

He stopped abruptly. “Am I doing something wrong?” 

“No-nonono—I’m just—“

Before he could answer, Justice shifted position, lowering his face tantalisingly close to his crotch. “Would you prefer it if I—?”

All it took was a single delicate lick up the side of his length for Miles to feel a shudder running through him. He wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to do anything, that the thoughts that perhaps this wasn’t such a great idea were returning and that as a responsible—  _God._  He nearly jumped as Justice took him into his mouth in one quick movement. And  _damn_ , he considered, fists clutching handfuls of bedding either side of him, Justice was  _good_. He was the perfect combination of almost-innocent and perfectly aware of what was happening, he was confident and in control in a way that was—

Miles hissed, sucking in his breath as he felt Justice’s tongue rubbing along the underside of his cock, a final addition to movement and sensation which was already close to perfect—if he kept this up for any amount of time—

"Justice," he mumbled quietly, trying to keep every other utterance he could have made in check— "I'm going— to—"

Gasping and abruptly stopping, the other man pulled away. "Are you—" he started asking the question somehow lost amongst desire and hurried breaths. 

It took Miles a moment to compose himself with the strange instant tang of sharp cool air hitting him where the warmth of Justices' mouth had been previously. "I'm— fine—" he murmured— "Are you—?"

"I'm—" Justice's voice was in gasps too, and when he shifted against Miles like that, shirt hanging open, his skin pressed against his chest— he could  _swear_  he could feel a maddeningly racing heartbeat. "I want you, Mr. Edgeworth," he said. "Don't worry about... this. I  _want you_." 

"I—" Miles started to say, and stopped. He couldn't see his face, though there was no mistaking his physical response, or the sheer want in his voice. Yes, he was an adult. Yes, this was a messy situation. But—  _damn_ — Justice was—

 

"Why?" he asked. It was a stupid question, of course, which had drunkenly emerged from nowhere, and he mentally cursed his lack of self-control and the fact that somehow the inexperienced— well, those had been Wright's words— defense attorney— had weakened that. 

Justice sat back, removing his shirt and throwing it to the floor. "Is it that hard for you to believe that—" he started asking, and then stopped, shifting against Miles and perhaps realising that it wasn't about that but about something else.

"I'm not Mr. Wright," he offered seriously. No, he wasn't. But he was pressed up against him, and his skin was soft and warm and beneath it was a racing heart and pulse and Miles could feel an insistent erection pushing up against his thigh. Compelling evidence, of course, that indeed, Justice wanted him badly. 

"I know that," he whispered, leaning into him and clumsily kissing him on the bridge of his nose. "Just like I'm not Mr. Gavin." God— of all the stupid things to say—

Justice made a funny little noise in the darkness and whispered back— "I know."

 

Agreement settled, Miles could feel himself relaxing under the other man’s touch and the delicate haze of alcohol. He tentatively reached out, one hand cautiously running over Justice’s thigh—what if he came across as overly old-fashioned or weirdly disturbing or  _creepy_?—until Justice clasped his much smaller— but still  _strong_  fingers over his. 

“You’re not going to break me,” he muttered, directing Miles’ hand between his legs. “Do you think I’ve never had it rough before, Mister—"

Miles wasn’t sure if it was a bizarrely sentimental gesture brought on by the alcohol, or a genuine desire to not hear the end of—and not consider the implications of— that sentence, but he leaned forward, simultaneously shutting him up—and giving him what he wanted—with an aggressive, perfectly-timed kiss. He wasn’t used to those sorts of silver-screen flourishes, but when he felt the warmth of Justice’s mouth against his own, and the vibration of a moan rattle through him, reverberating into his own mouth, a shudder ran through his body like electricity. 

Apollo’s hands were exploring him with the kiss, and Miles finally felt grateful for the darkness; there was no need to shut his eyes (even though he did anyway)—somehow not having to look Apollo Justice directly in the eye as he  _did this_  with him gave him cause to relax and enjoy the other man’s touch. He could feel himself growing harder and strained, and he broke the kiss, pulling away urgently. “Justice,” he murmured against his cheek, “If you keep doing this I’m going to—“

He chuckled shyly, and the intensity of his strokes abated. 

“I—“ he started to say, but apparently lost for words, merely concentrated the efforts of one hand in removing his own pants. Miles shuddered as he felt skin brush against his fingertips and kissed him again, no longer certain he was intoxicated by the alcohol he’d consumed earlier. When he gave it ample consideration, there was something quite perfect about Justice: it wasn’t just his aethestic appeal or his skill—though both were undeniably enjoyable—there was an eerie sixth sense about him. Was it that bracelet Wright had spoken about?—no, he thought, realising he couldn’t feel the cool touch of wood against his skin—or some kind of extra sensory perception—a concept he’d had little time for prior to—

“ _God_ —“ His voice escaped him in a hiss as Justice’s hands taunted his cock with sensation. The unasked question burned in his mind—  _Does he really want me to fuck him?_  and a wave of stage fright flooded his system. But Justice’s eagerness about the whole matter set his mind at rest as he felt lips crushed against his and a hand pushing him down onto his back. He hadn’t… been in this position very often. With Manfred there’d been the odd reversal of their usual positions though that had felt strangely educational in a way, and he’d been fraught with concern about adequately performing, almost to the point that it overrode the pleasurable aspect of what they were doing.

 

With Colias, it wasn’t really a point of discussion; Colias lead the relationship without question, and he was always the one to initiate sex, something which he tended to do frequently enough to give Miles no cause to do so himself. It was a metaphor for everything else they did once they were a couple: Miles just followed along and tried to keep up. When it came to sex, Miles realised he just found it far simpler to be receptive to his partners.

Another thing to be grateful for, in the darkness: Justice couldn’t see the panic on his face, could he? Though he could probably feel the way he tensed up, because he pushed down on him with his full weight, holding him against the bed, partially-naked skin against skin, his moist breath against the side of his face in a scandalous whisper. 

“I want you to fuck me, Mister Edgeworth,” he said huskily. “Like I’ve been thinking about all night at that—“

_At that_ what _?_  

 

He had no need to hear the end of the sentence, because Apollo’s presence—the feel of his weight against his own, his skin against his, that  _voice_  and its request—the biological was winning out over the psychological. He was drunk enough and preoccupied—and  _hard_  enough—to not want to give much thought to the before—or god, now that it occurred to him—the  _after_  of the situation they were in. 

He wanted him. His resolve had melted; the twitching in his cock, the trembling in his skin—that was what was compelling him at the moment, and Apollo’s insistence wasn’t at all dissuading him at the moment, either. He turned to the bedside table and fumbled around, yelping out an expletive when he hit his elbow against solid metal. 

Justice shifted above him and reached over. “I’ll do that—“ he said, leading Miles to wonder if he had a wealth of experience in searching in the darkness for things in bedside table drawers. It was a concept his didn’t consider for very long when he heard an audible  _snap_  and a moment later, felt cool hands stroking his erection. Biting back a whimper, he tried to pull Justice towards him, though he remained frustratingly out of reach as he slowly—almost frustratingly so, but not frustratingly enough to make Miles rush matters and possibly ruin things—lowered himself onto his cock. He could feel Justice squirm slightly, adjusting and contracting against him, and pushing against him. 

_Damn_. He bit his lip, worried that he would be finished in less than a second. Distracting himself, determined to maintain that self-control he was apparently reknowned for—which felt like it was solving rapidly— he pulled Justice against him, kissing him deeply. It didn’t help that fading self-control at all that Justice mewled somewhere into the back of his throat and twitched against him, in a gesture that Miles wasn’t sure was controlled or just as out of control as he was, control _ing_  or an act of submission. He cursed himself for even giving it thought as Apollo pushed against him and pushed his lips away. “Come on,” he muttered, pushing back down. “Fuck me, Mr. Edgeworth.”

 

  
_Challenge accepted_. Even if he’d had doubts—reasonable, rational,  _fair_  concerns about the situation they were in, his body wasn’t listening. It was one thing to have him here, like this, sitting on top of him, his warmth and his weight and his  _energy—_  the feeling of a pulse and a life which couldn’t be replicated with anything—and the argument sensation was making was only strengthened by the insistent voice wheedling and whining at him. This was the sort of thing he fantasised about, though the actor featuring in said fantasies was unimportant; it was the way he so positively  _wanted_  him, without stiff-upper-lip properness or without any kind of embarrassment or suspicion—

He pushed against him, prompting a surprised gasp from Justice who moved back against him, pushing him into the mattress and groaning audibly. Wright had made jokes in poor taste about him being  _loud_  because of his constant vocal training, and for the first time, Miles could understand what he meant. But  _still—_  they were in a hotel, no one knew, and there was something crackling and exciting about the cries of ecstasy coming from him: this was what it felt like to be unabashedly  _wanted_  in a purely physical sense. Pushing against Justice again—and now some effort was required to do so—despite the slight frame, Justice was  _strong—_  another pleasant surprise, Miles supposed—he found himself moaning quietly, his senses overloaded and his usual sense of dignity… elsewhere.

“That’s… it”— Justice panted against him, his lips attempting to move in for another aggressive kiss and missing his mouth, landing on Miles’ chin instead. Not that he minded; it was human and endearing. Using the chance to shift himself up the bed somewhat while Apollo was distracted, he thrust in harder against him, wondering if he could make Justice scream. Wanting to hear him scream.

 

Wondering what his face looked like now that he was away from the only section of dim light in the room, wondering what his eyes looked like and what they were seeing and what—if anything—was rushing around in his mind. 

“Arrr—“ It was an almost pained, but undeniably rapturous sound which left him then, making Miles only want to increase his pace, to take him harder, to find some release—  
“I’m going t—“ The younger man fell still and limp, though there was still tension in his skin— Miles found the self-control a variety of things—amusing and admirable, yes—frustrating, definitely. He’d been pushed to a point of—

“Justice, I’m”—he could feel his body tensing with that urge, that need, that point-of-no-return starry-headed bliss. Equal parts terrifying for its representation of complete loss of control—and perfection because it was like finding, for a moment, a few seconds of space where something was more important than the  _need to have_ total control. And now Justice was stopping that because—

Panting, he started moving back against him, rocking and raising his body slowly at first but moving into a faster tempo within a few movements.

“I didn’t want to—“

Ordinarily Miles would have considered what that meant, possibly wondering in suspicion if there was some other brand of Kristoph Gavin’s reportedly sadistic nature involved with even letting the kid have a normal, ordinary orgasm, but at the moment, he was too far gone for analysis of the situation. “Justice,” he gasped, holding him there, “I’m…” Lost for words, he put it simply. “Let’s just do this.”

 

It was less than a moment later when Justice mumbled something to him, pushing against him insistently, his body tensing in one thorough moment—complete with a ragged moan which sounded almost  _pained—_  which Miles didn’t need to be able to see properly to recognise. He wished he could have seen how he’d looked when he came, on consideration; it might have relieved his own tension. 

Justice seemed sheepish; there was a moment where Miles could feel him, still there on top of him, tension gone, moist and limp and  _sloppy—_  but that only lasted a few seconds before he climbed off. Miles grunted with irritation. He’d been close to orgasm himself, but he remembered his own earlier frustrations of being the first to cross the line, so to speak, and he sniffed wryly in the darkness, feeling Justice’s weight shift on the bed as he moved towards the end of the bed. Miles wasn’t terribly interested in what he  _was_  doing—his hand had automatically shifted to complete the unfinished, and it only too a few moments and gasps for him to verge once more on the brink of release.

And then he felt Justice’s hands on one of his  _feet_.

He kicked away roughly, not completely aware of what he was doing; Justice made a small whimpering noise as he exploded in his hand. Gasping to himself, he reached to the bedside table for tissues, hearing Justice’s voice near the end of the bed.

“I’m—sorry—did that—?”

“It’s all right,” Miles reassured him. “I hope I didn’t hurt you—I—“

“I just thought you might have--?”

Was this a repeat performance of what he used to do for Kristoph? Did Kristoph like having his feet touched? He didn’t know, but the wheels of the logic machine in his brain were still turning. Logic. At a time like  _this_. He pulled Justice next to him, offering a small kiss which surprisingly met him on the lips despite the darkness. For sex, it had been surprisingly devoid of the kind of intimacy which usually made him feel stifled. “Thankyou,” he murmured.

Kissing him back, Justice shifted away. “I’ll need to turn the light on,” he started to say, as though he were about to offer an explanation for leaving— but Miles grabbed him strongly enough to keep him near, and wasn’t really surprised when Justice offered no resistance. 

“Stay here,” he said. “If you were thinking of leaving, it’s too late for that right now anyway… we’ll sort out anything tomorrow morning.”

He wasn’t just saying it because he didn’t want lights on and because the sex had left him so tired that he only wished for undisturbed sleep. He wanted it because—well, the way Justice so automatically slid against him under the covers, unflatteringly sweaty and smelling thoroughly scandalous, gritty and unsanitised and imperfect and awful as the entire thing was, it felt undeniably  _good_. It felt natural—awkwardness included— rather than contrived or  _logical_. 

And Justice’s frame next to his own—the feel of his skin and warmth and pulse and  _presence_  was oddly comforting, and the way Justice draped an arm across his chest felt  _good_. He didn’t need flowery declarations or praise when offered this, he realised, allowing his fingers to brush against Justice—mapping out his features, resting, eventually, in his thick chestnut hair lazily. 

In less than a minute, the two of them were asleep.

 

 

 

 

 

…The elevator hung there, a coffin waiting to fall from a height, with only one occupant.  _Him_. It always was just him, trapped in there, alone, feeling the slightly unstable suspension of the flooring beneath him, looking at the old-fashioned illuminated button numbers in front of him, lit up and taunting him. There was that sick feeling in his stomach spiralling out of control where he knew the inevitable was going to happen, and he braced himself, not looking at his shoes, not looking up, just looking stoically ahead at the closed doors, fingers gripping his elbow and holding it against him. He always did that; it was a distraction, he supposed, and if he could think about that—overanalyse some random detail, he knew it wouldn’t be as bad when it happened—

Thinking about it happening only made him realise it was going to, and he braced himself, preparing himself for the drop. Nothing ever prepared him for that awful lightheadedness, that sense that there wouldn’t be enough air to pull him through before the doors opened again. And he knew this was a dream; he’d had so many like this before and the entire scenario was sickeningly familiar. He’d sometimes dreamed that he’d hit the floor, the doors had opened, leading him into another claustrophobic corridor where the only exit was… another elevator, thereby bringing about the entire situation all over again. Wash, rinse, repeat  _ad infinitum_.

“Wait for it,” he assured himself. “Wait for it… wait for it…” 

And then there was blackness and the lights went out, the jolt and the screech of gears somewhere around him  and a bang like gunshot beyond walls he couldn’t see through and wouldn’t have seen through anyway because it was pitch black. His stomach lurched, but thankfully, he was awake.

 

 

 

  
_Awake_. In a strange—yes—a hotel—room. With twinges of a headache and pieces of the night coming back to him. The warm, sleeping body of Apollo Justice was next to him in the bed, probably feeling his jolts and terror and hearing him panic.  _Wonderful_. He wanted to deal with this like he usually did.

He wanted to run.

But unlike other occasions where random encounters had happened, the option of just walking out and going home—or elsewhere—wasn’t available. Out in the wilds of nowhere—and this was as close to literal as he would ever come—there was no other escape, no different hotel to shift to. Catching a train anywhere, at this hour, this early on a Sunday morning, from such a remote location—that wasn’t doable either. He was, frustratingly, stuck.

 

  
The bed and the sheets around him felt too warm; stiflingly, feverishly hot. He threw them off, realising the chill of the night air when he did: it wasn’t the blankets that were the problem, it was the body next to him. He wasn’t accustomed to this at  _all_. Years of sleeping alone had given him routine and a privacy and space which he enjoyed both literally as well as in a more abstract sense. Now he didn’t have that. 

 

 

Apollo Justice snoozed next to him, tired and sated and snoring, the alcohol amplifying the intensity of sleep. For a few moments, Miles watched him, the way his lips almost pointed, mouth slightly open, the quite in-out buzzing breath—and tried to imagine dealing with this—this sort of domesticity and intimacy—every night of his life. He shuddered; the idea made him uncomfortable. It was too warm when someone was next to you, there wasn’t space to move, and in the back of his mind was the niggling concern that  _what if he never goes away_? 

He frowned, a growing, hideous sense that he’d taken advantage of Justice—Wright’s stepson, for fuck’s sake—welling within him. He could not undo what had been done. He’d never had the social finesse to deal with this sort of stuff elsewhere. There’d been Manfred, who’d always told him what to do and how to handle things when he wasn’t sure, and there’d been his own ability to walk out and tidy himself up when all was said and done and spent. And then there’d been Colias, whose overinvolvement and smiling-assassin kindness had terrified him and had rekindled the nightmares—only the elevator wasn’t just where the rumbling and the asphyxiation and terrifying noises happened, the elevator was pressing in on him at all angles like a diabolical torture device. 

And then there’d been Wright, the impossible vapour trail, intangible and impossible and yet still capable of making his mind and body do things a mere idea shouldn’t have been able to influence.

None of those situations had this sort of  _inconvenience_  attached to them.

 

 

 

 

Eventually, he got out of bed, showered, enjoying the caress of warm water flooding over him and into his mouth. The headache was taking refuge in the recesses of his brain, though the thought of a full blown hangover in a few hours was only a mild concern. If anything, he reasoned, the pain and irritation would distract him from everything else. 

He washed his hair, letting the soap suds run down his body carelessly, hands pressed to the wall, steadying himself, deep in thought. What the hell would today be like? He didn’t want to think about it, but couldn’t not. It was like trying to avoid the thought of pain, with the word “pain” automatically drawing his mind to the idea and causing his muscles to seize up in anticipation, which in turn he knew intensified the pain.

What the hell was he going to do? 

He couldn’t just ask Justice to piss off; the situation needed to be dealt with with a level of decorum and sensitivity. But what if… —a list of horrible possibilities occurred to him, and there seemed to be no way out. From the mirror in the bathroom, fog-resistant and clearly visible from where he was standing, he could see the slight rise-and-fall of Justice’s breathing under the sheets in the bed. There would be no waking him; the only thing he could do was return to the bed—which was, after all, king sized—definitely spacious enough for the two of them—and try for sleep. Perhaps Justice wasn’t the clingy type either, and would have the good sense to disappear in the morning like he’d tried to last night. Was he an early riser or a late sleeper? Trying to recall conversations with Wright about such things didn’t help; at this point Miles could barely remember how things had turned into  _this._  Hadn’t he and Justice been arguing to begin with, anyway? 

He rinsed his hair and stepped out of the showing, shutting off the water. Still no movement from Justice in the mirror, and the sense of dread and suffocation returned to him as he dried himself off and pulled on his pyjamas. At least he was more physically comfortable now, even if the headache was creeping closer and closer to eruption. 

Eventually deciding that the only option available to him was bed, and succumbing to his exhaustion, he crawled back under the covers, cautiously keeping himself at a comfortable distance to Justice’s body. 

 

He knew the elevator in his dream was going to drop with sudden force and speed which would make him sick, and he waited for it. But the drop never came, this time, and the terror that it would remained for a short eternity.

 

 

 

.:.

 

 

 

Apollo Justice woke early. He wanted to believe that what had happened was a dream—because believing it to have taken place within the realms of his fantasies—which admittedly could get rather  _odd_  sometimes—made the whole thing more palatable. 

It wasn’t that he hadn’t wondered before. He’d seen pictures of Mr. Edgeworth long before meeting him, and the pictures had caused him to seek out video. The video had given him definite cause for interest, and then meeting him on those chance occasions made him curious. He could admit that much, even though the knowledge that Edgeworth was already smitten with Mr. Wright—and had been for years, from the sounds of it—placed him in the category of off-limits. Nearly as off-limits as if the man were heterosexual, but not quite; Edgeworth was a fleeting fantasy figure to add some variety to things. And while Mr. Wright said he was deeply flawed and screwed up—in the same sorts of ways that  _he_  was, Mr. Wright said—at least he didn’t appear to be a borderline sociopath. There was something gentle and kind in those grey eyes, while the rest of him appeared so formal and serious, and seeing him in action in the videos was both inspiring and… a lot more interesting than he wanted to admit.

 

He didn’t expect to be waking up next to him. Nor did he expect the little human intricacies which came with him; the mumbles and murmurs which never quite made it to the stage of words which escaped him, betraying him while he slept unguarded, sometimes mildly worried, sometimes nervous, and sometimes almost amused—because it was rare for him to wake up next to anyone else like this. Mr. Gavin was a heavy, solid sleeper who always would wake up before he did. There’d been one or two insignificant others, but with his crazy workload and lack of privacy, sleep was usually taken away from the scene of the crime, so to speak. He didn’t like staying at other people’s places because he didn’t want to be a bother and never knew when or how to leave, and he couldn’t very well bring someone back to the Wright residence. At least, not without Mr. Wright showing far too much amusement and being a— hopefully unintentional— cockblock. 

 

 

Now he was awake next to Mr. Edgeworth, who looked blissfully unaware of everything around him. 

Others may have looked at the silvering hair and the jawline which had lost some of its stern sharpness in his later years and deduced that ten years ago, Miles Edgeworth would have been very attractive indeed—but to Apollo, Mr. Edgeworth was close to perfection, physically. He was distinguished and elegant and confident in a way where he’d grown into himself and knew how he operated—and his limitations—very well. And yet there was a streak of something else—something darker and almost perverse, possibly, which lead to him doing his part in what had happened between them. 

 

As he had said, he liked them older. He always had done. Despite Wright’s unintentionally brutal quips about him having father issues, there was more to be said, in his opinion, for someone who knew what they were doing, who had the confidence to not be embarrassed by much, and the sensibility to see life as more than a silly X-rated amusement park. He wanted someone to sit down and talk to over the morning paper and a coffee, someone who could debate the merits of new legislation with him, someone who could equally appreciate a quick mind and sound logic as much as they could enjoy a particularly good blow-job. And his body tingled with consideration at what had happened the night before; it was like he’d married together the best bits of sex with Kristoph and his own dark desire to have more control. And then there’d been the realisation that Mr. Edgeworth had either cared enough about him—or been morally upstanding enough—to make sure he didn’t  _hurt_  him and that he was all right with everything that happened. It was sentimentally and stupidly romantic and the warmth of the idea made him glow, stretching in the bed next to Mr. Edgeworth, contented and hedonistic yet still wanting more. 

Much more.

 

But the reality worried him. What the hell was going to happen  _now_? Mr. Wright had talked about how Mr. Edgeworth was prone to flighty disappearances when stressed, and that one of the causes of such stress was other people trying to get too close to him. The man liked his distance. 

And since everything that had happened with Mr. Gavin—whom he still thought of with a pinch of remorse and guilty regret—and a strange kind of mourning—he’d longed for closeness. With someone. Anyone. Well, anyone who measured up to his standards. And yes, perhaps they were high, but Mr. Gavin had taught him to have great expectations. To do anything else would be to sell himself short.

Mr. Gavin was insane and he had murdered at least two people. The media had called him a sociopath, and Apollo had never found out if this was true or not, but in the pit of his gut, he believed it probably was. But he refused to let go of what he’d experienced: what had happened with Mr. Gavin had been real on some level. As real as the man lying next to him, who had been mumbling something in his sleep, steely and self-reproachful, which had sounded like, “Wait for it, wait for it…” 

 

  
He sucked in his breath, awareness of what had happened—and awareness of the throbbing in his head—only growing.  _Shit_. He’d fallen asleep before Mr. Edgeworth had, too, he suspected: was the journal safe? His first impulse was to look around the room in search of it, and he was relieved to see it on a small side-table, hopefully placed there by either himself or a thoughtful Mr. Edgeworth who hopefully had been too drunk or concerned about his privacy to be bothered reading it. It most likely, he deduced, hadn’t been read, though he admonished himself for being careless.

His stomach churned as he got out of bed, a brief dizziness encompassing him with the shock of abrupt movement. His journey was diverted; he headed for the bathroom instead of towards the side-table, where he spent the next ten minutes being sick into the toilet bowl. Deciding that a quick and quiet shower should be in order next, he showered, guiltily borrowing some of Mr. Edgeworth’s specially-designed shampoo and conditioner which was meant to enhance silver highlights. He’d never seen that brand before, but he recognised the scent when he squeezed some into his hand: it smelled expensive and exotic—but not at all ostentatious—much like the man himself. He wondered if the silver-enhancing qualities would be apparent in his own hair, and he stared into the mirror as he dried himself off, in search of enhancement. None whatsoever. But he could still smell the crisp perfume of the shampoo and as he pulled on his gathered-up clothing, and he realised that he probably didn’t feel as bad as he should have after all that alcohol. 

Now to find something to eat and—

He was neglecting the most obvious thing in the room, the one that he really did need to think about: Mr. Edgeworth. 

 

Glancing at him from the bathroom mirror, he frowned. There was something hideously unfair about this situation, and he remembered Mr. Wright’s taunts about how unstable the man was. “But you like your boys insane, don’t you, Apollo?” Wright had said with what was meant to be a carefree chuckle, “I could set you up with one of my clients if I come across any who might be interested…” 

It was little glass shard moments like that which made his resentment towards his former mentor and occasional fantasy fuel figure turn into a full-blown rage. And to only add to the indignation, everyone  _else_  thought Mr. Wright was so clever and charming and funny. He had to sit back and pretend it didn’t bother him. He had to go to the wedding. He’d refused to be best man, and he’d refused to make any speeches—and he’d still maintained a friendly but unimpressed demeanour toward his mother—who’d lied to him, apparently for his own benefit, as much as Mr. Wright had—but overall, he’d been so good and accommodating about it.

 

And then, well,  _this_  had happened. It had seemed like such a snide, clever idea at the time, but… looking at Mr. Edgeworth now, he realised he just felt a hideous sense of remorse about what had happened between them. Mr. Edgeworth had nothing to do with Mr. Wright, and beneath his initially valiant defense of the man, it was more than likely that Miles Edgeworth had his own unaddressed anger issues towards him. 

Then there was the fact that Mr. Edgeworth was…

He blinked. There was no denying it; Mr. Edgeworth checked all the boxes on the list: he was, intelligent, he didn’t make stupid jokes about everything, and there was a sensitivity about him which was perfectly human. He had a great career, and he had good taste in wine. And he was perfection on a purely shallow, aesthetic level as well: a handsome face, a still-pleasing at a glance body, and a sharp and impeccable dress sense. It wasn’t hard to draw favourable comparisons to Mr. Gavin. And he felt guilty about it, but… it was there. 

And things had been odd and shallow and stupid between them, and the way Mr. Edgeworth had sounded whilst asleep—“Wait for it, wait for it” sounded terribly apprehensive. Maybe Mr. Wright was correct, and he did require a level of insanity in those he became involved with. And if so, what the hell did that say about  _him_? 

 

He walked over to the journal and began writing, borrowing a pen from the half-open suitcase Mr. Edgeworth had obviously grabbed the pyjamas from, glancing at Mr. Edgeworth between words. His head throbbed and he needed food, but before breakfast, he needed to write. That was one of his routines. Already had had overwhelming sense of failure; like he’d been offered something wonderful and he’d sullied it. He wasn’t sure whose fault it was, but the guilt flooded him. It was the same guilt he’d felt when he’d heard that Mr. Gavin would be executed; he’d done what felt right at the time, yet there’d been an unseen repercussion which horrified him. He wasn’t sure if he could undo this one, either.

He’d heard the panic and terror in Mr. Edgeworth’s voice in his sleep. Those weren’t the sounds of a contented, happy person who’d subconsciously decided that he’d just met the love of his life. Those were the sounds of an eternal bachelor who hired a penthouse suite for himself at his best friend’s wedding and who drank and fucked to forget reality. 

 

Apollo sighed. Even though he was perfect. Even though he’d waited for this. 

Even though he was still possibly in love with someone else, and the same could be said for him, too. 

 

 

.:.

 

 

 

Miles Edgeworth jolted awake on the bed, his eyes opening and glancing around like a terrified rabbit. It took Apollo a moment of recognition before he realised that he’d been caught watching him.

That moment of shame and humiliation in Miles’ eyes was enough for him. The impossibility of their situation had been silently announced with that gesture, and he did the one thing he knew how to do; he offered him release and dignity, pretending he hadn’t quite noticed, like he was lost in thought and had casually glanced at him when in reality, he’d been watching him clearly. 

Turning back to the journal, Apollo Justice considered what he was going to write. This needed documentation, but he wasn’t sure how to or where to start. Mr. Edgeworth, at another stolen glance which he couldn’t help stealing—was either asleep—or pretending to be asleep—in the bed now.

 

He sighed, and looked down at the blank page and the pen in his hand threatening blue-black confessions and pathetic angst, and, feeling the weight of the instrument in his hand, began to write. 

_It could have been sweet…_   



End file.
